


Felicity Smoak and the City of Gold

by acheaptrickandacheesyoneline



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, F/M, From Uncharted to Indiana Jones to The Mummy to Clive Cussler books to Aladdin, Gen, I have stol...Borrowed so much, If you think you recognize a plot device or nod from somewhere you're probably right, Indiana Jones inspired, Remember the fic I've been talking about only as IndyFic, This is Indyfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-11-30 13:18:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11464392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acheaptrickandacheesyoneline/pseuds/acheaptrickandacheesyoneline
Summary: She didn’t plan on ever having an adventure unless it said ‘turn to page 34 to open the door’, but somewhere between being kissed in the library and running from a one-eyed man with a gun, Felicity was pretty sure adventure had found her whether she wanted it or not.It's like The Mummy, only not really.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dettiot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dettiot/gifts).



> Author’s Note: This fic has been over a year in the making now, and I owe so many people thanks for the help they gave me along the way. 
> 
> First, to dettiot, for being the first person to cheerlead for me on this, and for the beta work to make this first chapter pack some punch. Really, the entire fic idea wouldn’t have happened without your comment about Robbie Amell’s Twin being a patron that one day. Happy birthday!
> 
> I would be remiss if I didn’t thank all of the people who betaed for me with all the drafts that this went through. Andcreation, adiwriting, ohemgeeitscooley for their grammer catches and tense hunting, and ellefraser, almostvivian, lynslogic and nightkeepyr for yelling at me with excitement as they read. Couldn’t ask for better cheerleaders!
> 
> Finally, there will be artwork throughout this fic. I will credit the artist at the end of the chapter they are featured in.

Growing up, she had never planned to be a librarian. Felicity’s life had been computers from the moment she built her first one at age seven, all the way through her graduation from MIT with her Masters at age nineteen. While IT work had never been her ultimate goal — she couldn’t think about a life of telling people, “have you tried turning if off and on again” and not lose her mind — she knew it would have been the first step into a company through which she could then rise the ranks.

 

Of course, by the time she had graduated, the economy had gone down the toilet faster than her hacktivist days had. Given that the only other job she could find was working part time at Tech Village in her own personal version of hell, clearly the best option was to go back to school to get another degree, especially if she wasn’t the one paying for it.

 

Growing up in Vegas with an income coming only from her mother’s waitressing, she spent a lot of summers in the library, reading programming books, joining in on book clubs they had going on, or even a few of the arts and crafts things. Of course, that had all been when she wasn’t old enough to be allowed on the computers that weren’t just full of learning games.

 

She could have gotten around those blocks in a minute now, but at eight years old, it was a different thing entirely.

 

Basically, she had good memories of the librarians and libraries from growing up. When she did her research and saw that it would take a year, at most, for her to get her degree in Library Sciences, Felicity didn’t think twice before resigning her lease in Boston for another year. That was followed up with an email to her old advisor to let them know she was interested in coming back to MIT and could she maybe sign up for courses even though it was technically after the due date?

 

As it turned out, having masters in both library science and computer science & cyber security, along with a minor in Latin America studies (a few electives here and there and the next thing she knew, she had somehow gotten a minor) made her quite a catch for any library that was hiring.

 

The main branch of the New York Public Library had given her an offer she would have been stupid to refuse. Not only was it in New York, where she knew she could still apply for tech jobs while she worked at the library, but she would also have full access to their archives. Plus, moving from Boston to New York wasn’t all that expensive, especially once she had gone through her belongings and had donated what she didn’t need.

 

After a year working at the Schwarzman Building, living in New York, and taking the subway into Grand Central every morning, Felicity knew there was no way she would be leaving any time soon.  There was something so incredibly wonderful about being surrounded by books, hearing their rustling pages as patrons flipped through the new arrivals, or smelling that old book smell when she went to reshelve the returns that had come in.

 

Her favorite days were the ones that she could spend in the archives. Felicity was more than able to indulge in her love of history, especially those of some of the more fabled lost cities of the world, like Atlantis, El Dorado, Avalon, Shangri-La, or the supposed lost continent of Mu. Even if the last couldn’t exist due to scientific impossibility.

 

But today was not an archive day. Today was her day working in the Reading Room, helping patrons gather and read over research materials for whatever project they were working on that day.

 

“Good morning Patience, Fortitude,” she told the stone lions on her way past, giving Patience her customary pat on her paw.

 

Thankfully, it was a warm morning for May, so she didn’t need to try to store her coat under the small amount of open space under the desk. Felicity slid her bag into its spot before she clipped her name badge on, ready to face the day.

 

Five hours later, she was less ready to face the remainder of the day after answering the same questions ten times in a row. Her tablet in hand, Felicity motioned to Lyn that she was taking a fifteen minute break, before leaving the room and starting down the stairs into Astor Hall in all of its splendor.

 

She leaned against the marble wall at the landing for a moment, taking in the view of both patrons and tourists walking around. Her attention was drawn towards a commotion at the entry from Fifth Avenue.  A rather well dressed man rushed in, pushing through the crowd. He paused for a moment, and Felicity met his eyes when he looked her way, and saw the smile on his face before he started almost running towards her.

 

She had about thirty seconds — long enough to see three or four men run in, each with a hand under their jackets — before the man was right up next to her.

 

“Hi, sorry about this,” he told her with a grin that let her know that he was anything but.

 

 

He didn’t give her a chance to actually ask what he was apologizing for before his hands were on either side of her head against the wall and his lips were pressed firmly against her. She let out a gasp of surprise, letting him slide his tongue into her mouth a bit before slowly retreating back, running it softly over her lips for another second. With her eyes closed, she felt more than saw him pull away and begin to kiss up her jaw to her ear. “Are they gone?” he whispered to her with a lick to her earlobe.

 

“Huh?” It was about as much as she could manage to get out, with her brain shut down as it was.

 

“The guys who followed me in. Are they gone?”

 

Oh, now he was biting right where her neck met her shoulder and that was completely unfair. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw the four suits gathering back together at the doors, before they walked back outside.

 

“Yes” she gasped.

 

“Yes, they’re gone or yes, more?” he asked, lips brushing hers.

 

Shaking herself mentally, she brought her hands up to his chest — she would not notice how nice his chest felt under her hands, she would not — and pushed him away. “What was that?” she asked him. “You can’t just go around...kissing people like that!”

 

He tucked his hands into his jacket pockets and shrugged. “I’m assuming they’re gone, given as how there is currently no one shooting at me? Great.” He turned and began to walk up the stairs Felicity had just come down . . . God, had it only been five minutes ago?

 

“You can’t just do that!” She rushed after him and reached for his upper arm to get his attention. “You can’t go around kissing random people.”

 

He gave a pointed look at her name badge before holding out his hand. “Oliver. And I see you’re Felicity. There. Now we’re not random people.” He gave her a smirk that told her that he was anything but sorry when she took his hand and shook it. “And, since you work here, maybe you can help me out. There’s an older journal that I’m looking for. One that the NYPL has.”

 

“I’m on break.” She closed her eyes in a brief wince. “I’m...I’m sorry. What I meant is that you’ll need to go to the reading room upstairs. If Lyn can’t help you find it, I’ll be up in just a bit and can go search the archives for it, if you tell me what the journal is.” With a final ‘have a nice day’ smile, Felicity turned her back on Oliver.  She was determined to enjoy the remaining ten minutes of her break, out on the steps of the library with her tablet.

 

She found it harder than normal to concentrate on her usual plethora of tech articles. Her thoughts kept drifting back to the kiss she had shared with Oliver on the stairs. Did it count as sharing if she hadn’t been kissing back, she wondered. Or was it more of something that she had experienced at that point. If she was honest with herself, which she did try to be, it had been an experience. Thinking back on her very few previous relationships, she didn’t think she had ever been kissed with such a degree of thoroughness before.

 

Felicity closed her eyes, counted back from three, and pushed the kiss from her mind for two reasons. One, she had to go back to work and deal with Oliver as a patron. Two, it had been an unwelcome kiss. A good one, but unwelcome. Like she had told him, going around kissing random people wasn’t something that could be done. But he had done it, and it had been a very good kiss from an objective standpoint and she really didn’t have time to deal with this right now.  

 

“Later tonight. With wine and mint chocolate chip,” she muttered under her breath as she stood and closed the lid on her tablet. There, now she had a plan.

 

While she was hesitant to go back inside, she was thankful Oliver was nowhere in sight when she went back to the reading room. Felicity gave Gladys a smile when she met her behind the desk to take her spot back. Hopefully, the older woman had already helped Oliver find whatever he needed and he wouldn’t be back. As much as she enjoyed helping and answering questions, she could now firmly add patrons who randomly kissed her to the ‘con’ side of working at the library.

 

Which she was totally going to stop thinking about. Right now.

 

Not seeing anyone approaching the help desk, Felicity ducked under the counter to slide her tablet back into her bag and pulled out her small notebook and pen, intent on working more on her pet project. Her hopes for a quiet afternoon were quickly shattered when she stood up and saw Oliver leaning against the counter.

 

He had appeared so quietly she hadn’t even heard him coming over. She let out a small ‘eep’ of a noise before catching herself and attempting to calm her racing heart. Not only did he kiss random people, but he snuck up on them, too. He was a ninja. A kissing ninja.

 

“Hello again,” he said, his quiet voice breaking her out of her thoughts.

 

“Hi,” Felicity responded.

 

“You said you could help me find a journal?”

 

She closed her eyes and nodded. “Journal, right. You had said you were looking for that earlier. Which of course you are. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Unless it was to use the computers.”

 

A pause for a breath as she took him in:  jeans that hugged everything, tailored shirt with the first two buttons undone, a leather jacket that she knew was as soft as it looked.

 

“But you look like the type of person who probably has their own computer. Not that there is a specific look for computer owners, because that would be ridiculous. But considering the ratio of computers versus books in this place, it’s easy to assume, which, you know what they say. Not that I’m calling you an ass! I might be calling myself one, though, and I need to stop talking in three, two, one…”

 

Felicity closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see the likely smirk on Oliver’s face from her babble and took a deep breath, forcing her racing heart and brain to slow down. When she opened them, she was surprised to see that he was giving her a small smile, amusement on his face but not like he was laughing at her. It was different from the normal reactions to her babble, and it made her smile back at him a moment before she remembered that no, she should not be smiling at the Kissing Ninja, especially not while on the clock.

 

Turning to her computer, she pulled up the classic catalog and quickly typed in a few search terms, so that the results would only bring back journals. No biographies, no history books. “What’s the name of the author of this journal?” she asked, hands poised for typing.

 

“His name is Diego de Ordaz. Born in Spain in 1480, died in Venezuela in 1532,” Oliver said. “He wrote a journal during his time in South America, right before he died there.”

 

Her fingers moved swiftly across the keys, typing in the keyword fields in order to narrow the search parameters. A part of her mind noticed how earnest Oliver’s voice had gotten when he started describing the journal, all the teasing gone from it. This was something that was important to him, far more than anything else. He wasn’t giving off the vibe of a student desperate for a final thesis source, either.  Especially not with how he had run into the library, being chased by men he was trying to get away from.

 

The de Ordaz name was ringing bells in her head, too, though she wasn’t positive as to why. Had she reshelved that one earlier today? Or maybe another patron had asked her for it earlier this week? Given that it had been written in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, it was no surprise that the actual handwritten copy itself wasn't allowed out of the archives. But there was a copy of it that could be loaned out. Or could be if it hadn’t already been checked out by another patr…

 

Oh.

 

It had been her.

 

“If you don’t mind me asking, what is in this journal you’re hoping to find, Oliver,” she asked him. Felicity shuffled through the papers that were on the desk around there and found the copy of the de Ordaz journal she had been reading earlier in the week. Meeting his eyes, she told him, “Because if it’s information on pre-Spanish South America, there are better sources out there than one of the conquerors themselves.”

 

“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said with a smile.

 

Their hands brushed when he reached out to take it, but Felicity didn’t make any move to let go of the book. She just raised an eyebrow and waited for him to answer her question. His shoulders slumped slightly, making him seem less of a giant as he sighed.  

 

“Diego led an expedition up the Río Orinoco. No one is sure why, but a prevailing theory is that he was searching for--”

 

“El Dorado,” Felicity cut in.

 

She knew this story. It was one of the reasons she had checked the book out in the first place. It was also why she knew that there was next to nothing in it regarding El Dorado or any mention about finding it. She had a better chance of getting information from the old Amazon Trail game she had played at the Las Vegas Public Library than from Diego’s writings.

 

“Well, yeah.” Oliver flashed her another smile when he was finally able to take the journal from her. “Been working on tracking this down for a while.”

 

He gave her a wink before he walked away, leaving Felicity to stare after him as he took a seat at a table near the edge of the room, away from the entrance. She watched him a moment longer, now that there was no one around to stop her and nothing else she had to be doing. He was staring intently at what looked like a rock he had pulled out of his pocket, before staring at the journal for a few seconds. Then he wrote something in a notebook, after which the whole process started again.

 

Not a grad student from the local university, that was for sure.

 

Felicity gave a mental shrug and returned her focus to the other patrons in the room and the mess that was her desk for the afternoon. As much as she didn’t want to clean it up, some of the papers could do with organizing. But that could probably wait until later that evening, when there wasn’t the risk of someone coming in and her not being on desk. And while she couldn’t keep her mind on her tech articles from before, she knew that a bit of mindless online reading would be just the thing.

 

Gothamist it was. “Just an article or two,” she promised herself quietly. Everyone at the desk seemed to look at Gothamist, given how it was the first option to show up as soon as she had typed in ‘g’. “Or maybe three if I only look at the short ones.”

 

The first article that caught her eye was the fact that Staten Island was getting a new restaurant that was brunch only, a fact that made her breakfast-loving heart leap for joy. She was about to click it when she scrolled down a bit further than planned and saw a photo of Oliver, the Oliver that was sitting less than twenty feet from her. The Oliver who had run into the library earlier with guys chasing after him — guys she was pretty sure were carrying guns. The Oliver who had kissed her. The photo of Oliver attached to a headline of “Oliver Queen Spotted in Manhattan; Astors and Vanderbilts Put Extra Locks on Family Mausoleums."

 

“Oh, frak.”

 

Now that she knew just what family Oliver belonged to, it made the past hour even worse than she had thought. Before it had just been embarrassment on her part. But now, she had actively helped a member of the Queen family — who was well known for having made their riches through their grave robbing and tomb desecration along with finding the average shipwreck location — locate where the City of Gold and the Golden Man were said to be, according to legend.

 

The papers never called it robbing. It was exploration. Like they were some sort of family full of Indiana Joneses. The books also never confirmed that the reason the Queen family had enough money to finance all of these globe trotting adventures throughout the last two generations was because they had found the lost ship that had held the Amber Room, before quietly and illegally selling all of it on the black market. Pieces of that treasure had turned up in various private collections throughout the years, but never anything to confirm whom they had purchased it from.

 

It wasn’t all that hard to put the pieces together though. Especially not if you were Felicity Smoak. And she was.

 

Which likely meant that Oliver was going after El Dorado.

 

Holding her head high, Felicity walked quickly across the room towards where Oliver was sitting, still engrossed in his writing. Her heels struck out a staccato rhythm on the marble floor, a sound that made her walk tall, filling the room with her presence as she had watched her mother do on the floors of Vegas casinos to garner tips.

 

A good pair of heels was just as much a set of armor as a computer’s firewall was.

 

She stopped cold next to Oliver and waited for him to look up at her as she invaded his space. What she really wanted to do was reach her hand across his line of sight and slam the book shut, but there was only so far she could go, even if she was upset with him.

 

“You’re Oliver Queen,” she stated, trying to keep her voice down.

 

“I am, yes,” he said slowly, looking up at her. He had paused in his writing, but didn’t close his notes. “I thought you knew that from earlier? After all, we aren’t strangers.”

 

She ignored his comment and instead leaned over and planted her hands on the table. “What are you doing with the de Ordaz book? Couldn’t just buy your own?”

 

“Why spend money when I can just pop in here for a moment to get what I need?”

 

His innocent face as he looked up at her… nope, she wasn’t buying that. There was something else going on and she was going to find out what. History was one thing that was allowed to have mysteries. There was no way to sort out what was real and what was not based on books alone, as much as she might try. But people? Computers? That was another thing entirely.

 

“Why are you looking into...into El Dorado?” She almost whispered the words even though there was no one around them.

 

Felicity could perfectly picture what would happen if word got out that the Queen family was looking into that mythical place. There was a reason they were known as some of the most successful treasure hunters; they never went after something unless they were sure it existed. As soon as they found it, they quickly brought it to auction, selling to the highest bidder rather than donating it to a museum, ensuring that only the rich would be able to see priceless things on a daily basis.

 

“I want to find it,” Oliver said simply. After a moment where she held her tongue and held his gaze, he relented. “I want to be the one who finds it, have my name connected with it.” Setting his pen down, he met her eyes. “Everyone knows who my parents are. Especially my dad.”

 

Felicity couldn’t help but nod in response. For all that she was upset with him right now, he wasn’t telling her anything that she didn’t know there. Robert had been the one responsible for finding Nuestra Senora in the 1980s, one of the biggest shipwreck finds given the amount of gold and silver and other valuables that had been recovered.

 

“See? Even you know of him,” Oliver said.  And that there was what stopped Felicity for a moment, made her stand up instead and take note of just how dejected he sounded. “Which means I am always going to be Robert’s son, never Oliver, unless I find something bigger, better. At least to the people who matter.”

 

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that he was Oliver to her, that it didn’t matter what others thought as long as he was happy. Thankfully, Felicity caught the words before they could bubble forth in a babble that was sure to cause trouble. It shouldn’t matter to her what he thought of himself, it shouldn’t.

 

But it did.

 

“That’s why I’ve been looking for El Dorado,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. “This,” he held up the arrowhead, “is said to unlock the code that Ordaz wrote in his journal. Which will then tell us how to get to the location.”

 

“Us?” Way to go, self, she thought. Of course it was the word ‘us’ that she had focused on.

 

He looked almost as shocked as she felt, so there was that. “Me. I meant me.”  He looked down at his notes. “But I must have done it wrong, I can’t figure out what this says. Or maybe the story of the arrowhead leading the way is just as fake as the story of the city.”

 

“There is always some truth in every story,” Felicity told him, spinning his notebook towards her before she could second guess herself. Pulling her red pen out from behind her ear, she nibbled on the end while she stared at his tidy writing. “If you make these into words here,” she drew a line between two strings of letters, “here,” another line, “and here, it starts making sense.”

 

“I don’t see it,” he said.

 

She wrote out the words under his pencil in her red pen. “Na caixa atada,” Felicity said. “It’s Portuguese.”

 

“Which is not a language I know. Dammit.” His pencil almost broke in half with the amount of force he slammed it onto the table.

 

“Oliver!” She widened her eyes at him before gesturing to the room around him. “I might be helping you with this, but that doesn’t mean I won’t ask you to leave for being too loud! This is a library. Not your private lair.”

 

“You speak Portuguese?”

 

“That’s all you got out of that?”

 

“It’s the important bit!”

 

Felicity had never before wanted to take her glasses off to rub at her eyes in annoyance. It was a new feeling, and not one that she enjoyed. “I don’t speak it, but reading it is a lot easier.”

 

“Will you translate this?”

 

“Are you asking me to help you find El Dorado so that you can stake your claim on it and become famous?”

 

“Would it help if I said please?” he asked. That stupid smile of his was back on his face again.

 

She could feel her heart being near torn in two at the choice in front of her. On the one hand, there was the thrill of being on the hunt for something she had only read about, a chance to actually help find and prove that a fabled lost city was actually real. On the other, she would be helping Oliver Queen. Felicity was pretty sure that there was no way he was just going to be okay with telling the UN about it and letting the gold that was said to exist just stay there. Likely all of the other artifacts she was sure actually would once again be put up on the auction block too, and the myth would be as good as gone.

 

She never got a chance to turn him down. With a speed that rivaled his earlier random kissing — no, still not thinking about that, it was just a kiss and really, it wasn’t even that good of one — Oliver was shoving everything from the table into a satchel before grabbing her arm as he stood.

 

“What are you…” she tried to ask while he dragged her quickly over to a corner, well out of sight from the door.

 

“We need to go, now. What is the quickest way out of here?”

 

She pulled her wrist out of his grip with a force born of anger. “What is going on? I can’t just leave!”

 

“Felicity.” Oliver reached for both of her hands, trapping them in between his larger ones. His voice was low and serious, a tone she hadn’t heard from him yet, one that instantly had her paying attention. “At the entrance to this room right now is a very dangerous man, who is trying very hard to get me. It was his men who were after me when I ran in here be — No, don’t loo—”

 

She wriggled out of his grasp and peered around his body, in order to see who it was he was talking about, before he could finish his warning of not looking. A man who would have worked very well as a James Bond villain was leaning against the doors, taking in the room with a practiced eye. One eye, given the eyepatch that he was wearing.

 

Oliver tugged her back behind him, away from the man’s line of sight. But the movement had drawn his attention like a mouse does a cat’s, and the well dressed man began a slow stalk towards her and Oliver.

 

“Frak,” she found herself saying for the second time that day. Her gut was telling her that Eyepatch was bad news. And while her brain might have been wrong on occasion before, trusting her gut had rarely gotten her into trouble.

 

“We need to move. Now, Felicity. He’s seen you with me. We both need to leave.”

 

Felicity bit her lower lip a moment before nodding. He was right. She could feel her heart pounding as she led Oliver away from Eyepatch, weaving between tables and patrons with an ease she had developed only through her months of working here. There was a staircase that was used for emergencies at the back of the room. She thought she could get them both to it before anything happened.

 

They were almost there when she heard who she assumed was Eyepatch yell out, “Queen!” It echoed over the marble and off the high ceilings, filling the room and causing everyone in it to freeze. Well, everyone but her and Oliver.

 

“Run!” Oliver commanded, racing ahead of her towards the door. Behind her came a loud crack that had Felicity ducking her head on instinct. Had that been...was that a gunshot?!

 

The yells and shouts of the patrons behind her were all the confirmation she needed that yes, it had been. “Frak!”

 

They burst through the emergency door, setting off an alarm in the process. The one corner of her thoughts that wasn’t scared out of its wits about being shot at recognized the alarm as a good thing, since it would get people moving and exiting the building.

 

In front of her, Oliver was running down the stairs, leaping when close to the bottom and swinging around the railing to get to the next, in an attempt to go even faster. And while she could run in heels if she was forced to, running in heels down a staircase was something even her mother, the indomitable Donna Smoak, would have had problems with.

 

“Felicity, hurry,” Oliver called up to her. They both froze for a moment as they heard a door above them slam open.

 

The same voice from before called out, “C’mon kid, I know you’re here. You might have given my men the slip before, but you won’t get away from me!”

 

Felicity found herself making a panicked face at Oliver, who had quietly approached her while Eyepatch had been speaking. She knew there was no way she could run fast enough in her heels to get down the stairs and out in the streets to lose him in time.

 

“Go,” she hissed at Oliver, already hearing steps, carefully measured steps, coming down the stairs, closer to them. “I’ll only slow you down!”

 

“He’ll kill you,” he muttered. “I won’t let that happen.”

 

Suddenly, she was in Oliver’s arms and he was flying down the staircase again. He didn’t seem at all bothered by her weight. She was very glad that she had decided to wear pants to work that morning. Being shot at and carried down the stairs by a very muscle-y man hadn’t been what she had planned on happening when she had picked out her outfit that morning, but a skirt flying up around her hips would have just made it all even worse.

 

With a shove against the street level door, Oliver stumbled outside. Felicity had to take a moment to blink at the sudden sunlight after the darker confines of the stairwell in order to see where they were. He began to run towards the street, talking to her at the same time. “We need to lose him.”

 

“Grand Central station,” she said without hesitation. It would be busy this time of day, easy to slip through the throng of people and constantly moving trains. “That way.”

 

Holy crap. Somehow Oliver was running even faster than before, which should not have been possible given that he was carrying her. She could feel his heart pounding, felt him inhale and exhale, pushing himself to race the two blocks to the safety the station would offer.

 

And here she was, happy to reach her goal of five situps on Tuesday mornings.

 

“I need to take up running,” she told herself. Especially if being chased was going to become a regular thing, which looked like it might, given that she planned to help Oliver translate that jounal of his.

 

“Good to know you’re going to help me,” Oliver said with a grin, though his legs never faltered.

 

Of course she had spoken that. Because really, wasn’t that just the sort of day this had turned into.

 

At the doors to the station, Oliver set her down. She grabbed his hand, determined not to lose him in the crush of people. She risked a quick glance behind them and saw Eyepatch still coming towards them. “He’s coming!”

 

Normally, Grand Central Terminal held a grandeur that was enough to capture Felicity’s attention every time she walked inside, no matter how many times she had seen it before. The stately columns, the gold constellations against the dark blue ceiling, the marble flooring that saw hundreds of thousands steps against it every day. It was enough to make her stop for a second every day, to count her blessings that she got to see something so wonderful twice a day.

 

So it said something that she didn’t even glance up as they rushed in. Felicity led them right down the first escalator she could see, pushing past people like it was her God-given right. She had experienced it from the other end, being the one shoved, the first time she had come to New York and had made a promise to herself that she would never be that stereotypical resident of the Isle of Manhattan.

 

There was a first time for everything.

 

At the turnstile, Felicity fumbled for a moment with her pockets as she tried to find her MetroCard. Oliver leapt over it like he was some sort of action hero before he turned and lifted her over the turnstile. “Don’t have time for that!”

 

“There are cameras! I don’t want a fine!”  Her desire to pay her fare was something normal to hold onto during all of this madness, she supposed. Why else would she be worried about a fine for jumping the turnstile when there was Eyepatch with a gun after them?

 

Oliver stopping suddenly in front of her had Felicity running into his back. She took a moment to appreciate how his back and muscles felt under her hands as she caught her balance. “What’s wrong?”

 

“I...I’ve never used the subways. I don’t know where to go from here,” he admitted to her, looking lost as he stared at the different arrows and colors and signs hanging all around them.

This. This she could do.

 

It was with that knowledge that she led the way to the platform for the 7 train, reaching it just as the train arrived. There was a moment of feeling like a salmon swimming upstream when she tried to get in as other commuters were getting out, but the press of people quickly passed and then they were both inside, moving to seats as the doors closed.

 

As the doors closed, Felicity could see Eyepatch standing on the platform, staring after them, but she quickly lost sight of him as the train gained speed and entered the tunnels.

 

“Where are we going?” Oliver asked her. He was slightly out of breath compared to her panting and she wanted to hate him for it, even as she was on the verge of holding on to him and never letting go.

 

“Queens,” she told him after a moment. “We’re going into Queens. There are so many stops between here and ours, there is no way Eyepatch is going to be able to track us down anytime soon.”

 

He raised an eyebrow and turned to look at her. “Eyepatch?”

 

She gave a little half shrug. “I needed to call him something in my head.”

 

“His name is Slade Wilson,” he said after a bit. “And if you couldn’t tell, he’s sort of insane.”

 

Yeah. Bond movie bad guy, Felicity decided. With a name like that though, it was inevitable.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wonderful watercolor of Oliver and Felicity first meeting is done by the supremely talented Cherchersketch of tumblr. Find here here: http://cherchersketch.tumblr.com/


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s chapter two. As always, thank you to @adiwriting and @ohemgeeitscooley for catching tense and grammar mistakes, and to @dettiot for telling me what train lines go where!
> 
> Chapter Art by the wonderful @nightkeepyr!

 

 

 

 

It was a stop or two before Citi Field when Felicity found herself able to breathe without feeling like she was going to shake apart again. It was good timing on her body’s part as the next stop, Flushing—Main Street, was hers. Motioning to Oliver, who had stood up a while ago to make room for those who had to sit, she led them to the doors. It hadn’t taken long at all for Oliver to master the subway surfing way of walking, though watching him almost fall over the first few starts and stops at the stations had been fun. 

 

The five or six blocks to her apartment building made for a quick walk. The path was ingrained at this point for her. It led to Felicity pointing out some of the neighborhood oddities of her little corner of Flushing, like the bodega on the corner that was, for some reason, always out of ketchup. Or the small Chinese delivery that was never busy, but never went out of business. 

 

“It has to be a front of some sort,” Felicity explained as she turned towards her apartment building’s door, reaching for her keys. “It’s the only reason I can come up….” She trailed off, suddenly realizing that in the rush of being shot at, she hadn’t stopped to grab her bag.

 

Which had her keys in them.

 

Her keys and the cute little keychain of the Statue of Liberty she had bought her first day in the city. It was a way to quickly be able to pull her keys out of her bag without having to search for anything. Just reach in, grab the statue, and poof, she would have keys.

 

Keys that were back in the library under the desk.

 

The good news was that there was a way to get the outside door open without keys. Her upstairs neighbor had showed it to her one time when they both had their hands full and neither could easily reach their keys. Felicity hip-checked the door, lifting and turning the knob at the same time before giving it a sharp tug. With a slight pop, the lock disengaged and she was able to motion to Oliver to follow her inside.

 

“That doesn’t seem safe,” he told her, following her up the stairs. She glanced over her shoulder to see him peering at the outside door. 

 

“It won’t open like that unless you know the secret to it. A good thing too, since my keys are at the library.” Felicity gave a sigh outside her door when she automatically started searching pockets for her keys again. “I’m going to have to go see if Mrs. Phillips in 4C is home,” she told Oliver after a moment. “She has my spare key, just in case.”

 

She felt Oliver gently grab at her upper arm as she turned away. “Let me take a crack at it,” he told her. 

 

Take a crack at it? He wasn’t going to try to go all macho on it and try to batter the door down on her, was he? Given everything else that had just happened, it wouldn’t have surprised her. She was more than pleasantly surprised to see him kneel down in front of her door and jiggle the knob for a moment. No door bursting. She would get to keep her security deposit if she ever moved out. 

 

“It doesn’t have a trick to opening like the front door does,” Felicity mentioned. Oliver nodded, but didn’t respond. He instead reached into an inside pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a small leather case. He gave the knob one last measuring look before opening the case and pulling two lockpicks out of it. 

 

“Give me two minutes,” he told her.

 

“You can pick a lock in two minutes?” 

 

Oliver flashed her a smile. “What can I say? I’m good with my hands.” 

 

She could feel herself turning red as the implication of what he said hit her. Not facing him was clearly a better option, she decided, turning to look down the hallway. She could act as a lookout for him, just in case any of her neighbors happened upon them. 

 

Watching him from the corner of her eye, Felicity did have to admit he knew what he was doing. One of the two picks was dangling out of his mouth as he gently twisted and finagled with the other in her lock. He paused turning the thingy a moment to switch between the two picks, and she had to force herself to stop staring at him. And to stop thinking about how that tongue had...nope. Not thinking about it. 

 

Oliver’s excited “ha” from her door had her turning around to see her accidental guest pushing her door open, a grin on his face. “Told you I could get it,” he said.

 

“Yes,” Felicity nodded, “I am suitably impressed with your finger skills.” She paused in her doorway, replaying her last words in her head. “If I ask you to please forget that I said anything in the last minute and a half, is there a chance you would?”

 

“I could be persuaded to, if you order some sort of food,” he said. He walked past her into her apartment, bushing against her as he did. 

 

Felicity kicked her shoes off as she closed the door and made her way into the small kitchen nook to grab her stack of take-out menus. She tossed them onto the small table in the corner of the apartment and motioned to Oliver. 

 

“If you want something, there you go.” She didn’t wait for an answer before heading to her bedroom and the comfy clothes she knew she would find in it. After quickly changing, she sat on the edge of her bed for a moment, organizing her thoughts. 

 

On the one hand, Felicity really did want to help decode the journal, see what de Ordaz had found. It probably wouldn’t be as simple as following a GPS to the local bakery. She was under no illusions what Oliver would do with the information after she translated it to English. It would be stupid to even think that he would consider  _ not _ going after El Dorado. 

 

And Felicity Megan Smoak was not stupid by any means. 

 

She absently played with the ties of the quilt on her bed. If she did help Oliver by translating it, she might have an idea of where he was going next. She might not have the resources the Queen Family had when it came to treasure hunting and tomb raiding — Lara Croft she was not — but it wouldn’t be too hard to get through UN security protocols and send an anonymous message about the location.

 

Then she wouldn’t have to feel bad for helping him decode the journal. It wouldn’t be doing it for him, it would really be doing it for the world as a whole. Or what if it didn’t lead him to El Dorado? What if it was just some sort of joke that boiled down to a centuries old “ha ha made you look” moment? She would finally be able to put that myth to rest in her head, maybe refocus her energies back on looking for tech-related jobs.

 

She flopped onto her back and stared up at her ceiling. Tiny sticker stars reflected light back at her, perfectly and painstakingly arranged to mirror the night sky from home. She knew her mom would be the first to say do it, to take the risk, rather than playing it safe. The more she debated the pros and cons, the more she could feel her heart trying to outweigh her brain in her arguments.  She had made it a point to always follow her brain instead of her heart. After her dad had left her mom and her when she was seven, she learned quickly that following her heart didn’t always lead to good things. 

 

But more and more, Felicity decided, she  _ wanted _ to decode the journal. There wouldn’t be much harm in it, not really. Maybe she could even convince him to not go to El Dorado on his own, to take a team of actual archaeologists or historians with him.

 

With a determined nod to herself, she rose off the bed and returned to the kitchen. 

 

“I’ll help you,” she told Oliver by way of greeting. “With the translating and decoding.”

 

He raised an eyebrow at her. Snapping his flip phone shut — good Google, had he been on an island for the past five years while technology moved on — he slid it into his pocket to focus on her. Which was a very disconcerting feeling, being on the receiving end of Oliver’s full attention and focus. 

 

“I thought you weren’t planning on helping, due to me being a Queen and all?”

 

“Well, you clearly need my help if you are using that,” she told him, motioning to the phone sticking out of his jeans. “How you have not upgraded to something from the current decade is beyond me.”

 

He looked so confused at her comments, bless him. “Why would I upgrade? It works just fine.”

 

“Oh Oliver,” Felicity sighed. She pulled out her chair at the table and sat down, tapping the tabletop next to her. “Let’s start by talking about the importance of technology in your life.”

 

~~~

 

They found a working system early on, switching from them both using the arrowhead to decode the words hidden into the journal, to Oliver decoding and Felicity translating. 

 

While at first she had been wracking her brain, trying to remember a language she hadn’t studied in years, it started to flow somewhere around hour two. As did the conversation between the two of them. It didn’t take long for their conversations to turn towards their family, given that was the whole reason Oliver was doing this in the first place. 

 

“Why didn’t you just go ask your mom and dad for help,” she asked him around a bite of pepperoni pizza. “You’re rich, it can’t be that hard to get a translator.”

 

“It’s something I have to do on my own,” he shared after a moment. “To prove that I’m not just Robert’s son.”

 

“To him or to yourself?”

 

Oliver let out a small huff of laughter. “Maybe a bit of both?” He pushed his paper plate off to the side. “I don’t have the resources they did when it comes to research. They had contacts they could trust all over, favors they could call in. I don’t. And the person I had been working with…” He trailed off and waved his hand. 

 

Given his old partner had tried to kill them both earlier that day, not having people to trust was something that made sense to her. But if she was understanding him correctly, it sounded like he didn’t have the money to hire people for research either. Felicity gnawed on her bottom lip a moment as she reached for another slice. 

 

“But aren’t the Queens rich?”

 

“Oh, we are. Don’t get me wrong,” Oliver told her. He didn’t seem to be bragging about how much money he had. It was far closer to the way she might state a fact, such as she had grown up in Vegas, than anything else. “What I have in my name is nothing compared to what my parents had in their name though. And most of mine is being held in trust until I’m 30.”

 

“Had,” Felicity asked. She winced. “Probably not a socially acceptable thing to ask, is it?”

 

She watched as he toyed with the arrowhead in his hands, turning it over again and again. He had nice hands, if such a thing was possible to say. Large, but not oversized. They had a few cuts and scrapes, and dirt under his nails. It was clear that he used them, worked with them, instead of letting other people do things for him. It wasn’t what she expected for a member of the Queen family, regardless of their treasure hunting reputation.

 

After all, it wasn’t like they had to sail the boat themselves to go out and find a wreck.

 

“They did sail it themselves, actually.” Oliver’s voice broke into her thoughts and she realized she had spoken aloud again. Hopefully not about everything. She really hoped it was only the last bit about sailing she had said. He didn’t need to know that she was thinking about his fingers. Hands. His hands.

 

“What happened?”

 

“Dad and Mom were out looking for a wreck in the Pacific. I honestly don’t remember what one. They were out on their own for this one. Storm swept through.” Oliver looked over at her, a sad sort of smile on his face that made her heart hurt for him. “If there aren’t any signs of bodies, it can take at least seven years for a person to be declared legally dead.” 

 

“I’m...I’m sorry,” she told him. What else could she say? 

 

He gave her a small shrug. “I’m fine,” he assured her, even though she could hear he was anything but fine. Helping himself to the last piece of pizza, he motioned to the journal that he had pulled out before their dinner had arrived. “Ready to start work?”

 

Tossing her plate into her recycling bag, Felicity gave him a nod. “Let’s go.” 

 

While it normally would have been easy for her to switch gears and start working, she found herself distracted by a smudge of marinara sauce on the corner of his mouth. She should probably stop staring at it, really. At him in general. 

 

“Oliver? You have a bit of schmutz on your…” she tapped her own lips with her fingers. 

 

“Hmm?” He looked over at her and she went to hand him a napkin. “Oh, thanks.” 

 

His tongue darted out to lick it up before she could offer the napkin. Oliver’s attention went back towards the journal and the arrowhead key to the code, leaving Felicity to continue to stare at him, where the pizza sauce had been before…

 

“Felicity?” She swallowed and looked up, meeting Oliver’s eyes. “This is me noticing you staring.”

 

Before her mouth could override her mental filter, Felicity forced her attention back to her notes in front of her. There had to be a limit on the number of times a person could be embarrassed in a day. She had been carried out of her job after running from a crazy one-eyed man with a gun though. So maybe the universe just wasn’t on her side at all today.

 

Translation work, at least, would keep her busy. Even if she was quickly reminded how boring it could be. It was a bit like coding in that once she was in a certain headspace, she could do it without actively thinking. But until that headspace was reached, it was an endless repetition of look at word, attempt to remember meaning, double check the meaning, write it down, notice it wasn’t right in the sentence and find a new meaning before moving onto the next word. 

 

Much like her computer skills and coding, it did come back to her. Especially when she found her old translation program hidden in the files on her tablet. It was crude programming by her current standards, but undergrad her had appreciated having a way to move words around right on the screen, rather than having to rewrite entire sentences. It was something current her was also finding useful.

 

The one thing that was unlike her college days was that she was finding it really hard to pull an all nighter. She had taken off her glasses a bit ago to rub at her eyes, trying to keep them open, and hadn’t put them back on. It felt like little grains of sand were stuck in her eyes. Every time she blinked, Felicity just wanted to keep them closed. It felt so good to just relax, to not have words and languages swimming in front of her face.

 

It was close to three in the morning by the time they had gone through the journal. The pizza Oliver had ordered had been devoured hours ago, as had the midnight snack of chinese she had gone down to the corner to pick up.

 

A shake of her shoulder woke Felicity out of the half doze she had found herself in. “Whassat?”

 

“I know what he’s talking about. In the journal,” Oliver repeated. “The knotted map.”

 

“Coffee. I need coffee or this won’t make sense.” 

 

Absently, Oliver pushed his half filled cup through the empty takeout containers towards her. She gave it a look before deciding that cold coffee was better than no coffee and took a sip.

 

No. No coffee was better than cold coffee. 

 

“I remember my dad coming back home after finding this Spanish galleon,” he told her. “One of the things he found in it was this box that had a whole bunch of cords with knots all over them.”

 

“A  _ quipu _ ,” Felicity cut in. “That’s what the Incans called them. Or talking knots.” She reached for her tablet again and began pulling up various bits of information on them. 

 

Oliver paused, then nodded. “Exactly. That.” He pulled the translation over in front of him and pointed to another section. “I think that this section here is talking about how to get into the city itself, after you have your hands on the---the..”

 

“The  _ quipu _ ,” she reminded him. 

 

“The  _ quipu _ .” 

 

Oliver pushed his chair away from the table and rose. Felicity was struck once again at just how  _ large _ of a person he was in her small kitchen, seeming to take up all the space there was. Running a hand across the scruff on his jaw, he turned to look at her. 

 

“I think the one he’s talking about is back in Star City too, part of the private collection of Merlyn Global.”

 

“Of course it’s in a private collection,” she sighed. “Because why put it in a museum where everyone can see it and it could be studied and have new things found out?”

 

“It was sold at auction,” Oliver protested. “Everyone had a perfectly fair chance of buying it.”

 

“Fair?” She stood up quickly, almost knocking her chair over in the process. Her bunny slippers made little  _ swick swick _ noises across the linoleum as she strode towards him, anger and frustration making her shoulders tense. If it wasn’t for the fact it was three thirty in the morning, he would have been feeling the full volume of her Loud Voice. 

 

“Fair?” she questioned again, poking her finger into his chest. “How is it fair, making it people pay for something that should belong to everyone?”

 

And Oliver, the big dumb dummy, just gave her a look that was half smirk, half laugh, and annoyingly sexy in a way that he had no right to be when she had spent the last six hours helping him translate Portuguese. 

 

“It’s really not my fault, Felicity. It’s an open auction. Anyone can bid. Is it my fault that private collectors can pay more than public facilities?”

 

“You...You Tomb Raider,” she nearly yelled at him. Taking a few steps back and a deep breath, Felicity tried to calm herself down. “Well, then congratulations Mister Queen. You now know how to go about finding your golden city. I hope you and your buddy Scrooge McDuck have fun swimming around in your piles of gold together!” 

 

She could feel Oliver’s eyes following her as she pushed past him and swore that she heard a small laugh before she closed the door to her bedroom behind her. That’s what she got for trying to help someone who came from a family like his. It was her fault for falling for the ‘aw shucks I’m nothing special’ routine he probably used on everyone to get whatever he wanted. 

 

That damn kiss that had started all of this was just a way to get attention off of him after all. It had been stupid of her to think that he was attracted to her. She had just been...convenient in getting Slade’s men off of his trail.

 

Oliver didn’t even know what a  _ quipu _ was, the very thing that showed the way to El Dorado. She could probably do a better job at this, and the closest thing she had ever come to going exploring was wandering around MIT without a map the first time she had got onto campus.

 

Felicity sat up as the realization hit. She could do a better job. Heck, she had done most of the work on this so far. Translating, finding the journal. And Oliver had mentioned that the box his father had found was in Star City. It wouldn’t be that hard to find out who owned it. Or who owned any other the others that might have been found. Not now that she had the name of Merlyn Global.  A quick search on her tablet tonight would take care of it. 

 

She fell backwards onto her bed with a low groan. Her tablet was still out there in the kitchen. Where Oliver was probably still sitting, making plans on who to sell what to so that he could make the most money and add to his family’s fortune and to his own fame. With a grumpy sort of look at her door, and the man behind it, she rolled over and pulled her covers up. 

 

Tomorrow. She could deal with it all tomorrow. 

 

“Or today,” she muttered, catching sight of her alarm clock blaring out 4:00am with its bright red evil numbers. “But not right now today. After sleep today.”

 

At about the crack of noon, Felicity, still bleary eyed but unable to sleep anymore, slowly wandered out into the living room, expecting to see Oliver still asleep on her couch, or working at her table. Instead, the de Ordaz journal was closed, in the middle of it, her badge on top. There was a muffin from her favorite bakery down the road she had pointed out to him the night before. There was a folded scrap of paper with her name on it, edges ragged, like it had been ripped from a bound notebook.

 

In Oliver's neat scrawl, he had written that her coffee maker was all set up, all she had to do was press start. He apologized for stealing her badge for the library earlier that morning, but had wanted to get her keys back to her.

 

She glanced up and noticed that her keys were indeed hanging from their normal hook by the door.

 

‘Finally, thank you for the translation, Felicity. Please accept the muffin and the bag of french roast in your cupboard as payment.’

 

The note wasn't signed with anything other than his initials, nothing to prove that it actually had been written by him aside from his meticulous writing she had become incredibly familiar with the night before. 

 

Eyeing the large double chocolate chip muffin on her table, Felicity decided that he was making it very hard for her to hate him.

 

~~~

 

One of the best things about working at a library was that Felicity had access to computers and records and journals that it would have otherwise taken a while to get. The downside was that it was often too busy to really take advantage of it. Which meant sacrificing her lunch to the whims of the eternally slow wifi of the Public Library System in hopes that she could find information before it was time to go back to work.

 

Google, however, was a kind mistress that day, and her first attempt at searching  _ Merlyn Global _ and  _ quipu _ brought up a series of news briefs regarding the acquisition of the piece. As a bonus,  _ Merlyn Global _ ’s website had an entire page dedicated to the history of the talking knots, with photos, linked directly from their homepage. 

 

Felicity absently chewed on the edge of her thumbnail as she scrolled down the page. The information she was getting from it wasn’t anything more than a near copy paste from the wikipedia article she had shown to Mister Tomb Raider the other day — she refused to think of him as Oliver — but the photos were what interested her the most. If they had one at a high enough resolution, there was a chance that she would be able to start trying to figure out the next step of the treasure hunt without needing to look at it in person.

 

She was determined now, even more so than when Oliver had first explained what he was doing. There was no chance that she was going to allow something of this magnitude to be just a photo on a computer screen, locked away in a vault until the owner wanted to remind themselves how rich they were by staring at it and rubbing their hands together.

 

Of course, her idea on what rich people did might have been slightly skewed based on too many late night viewings of the old Bond movies as a kid, but the idea remained the same. She wanted to make sure that if El Dorado was real, it would be something that not only everyone could see, but that its discovery would be something the world could benefit from. 

 

It seemed as though  _ Merlyn Global _ hadn’t sprung for the really good servers though. The quality of the photos they were hosting weren’t much better than what she could have taken with her cell phone back in 2006, and there was no way she was going to get a good zoom on that.

 

There was a link at the bottom of the page that took her to the Star City Museum of History’s homepage, where a large banner across it proclaimed the opening of a new exhibit on South America History.  _ Merlyn Global _ had graciously donated a few of their own items for the opening of it, including the  _ quipu _ itself. There was going to be a dinner and auction to benefit the museum itself on the evening of opening, during which the  _ quipu _ would be on full display.

 

A half a second later, Felicity was pulling up the calendar on her tablet. The opening night event was a bit over a month away, plenty of time to find plane tickets and ask Mrs. Phillips if she could water her basil plant while she was gone. Honestly, the hardest part would probably be getting time off. She hadn’t taken a vacation since she had started work though, so maybe her request of a week and a half would actually be considered.

 

Not that she needed a week to go to Star City. But if she was going to take a vacation, then she was going to take a vacation and not have to worry about rushing around and not enjoying herself. Just because she was trying to find the lost city of El Dorado didn’t mean she didn’t deserve to treat herself to a day off of doing anything but playing tourist. 

 

Which meant that it all boiled down to Felicity almost forgetting her clutch in her hotel room on her way out to catch a cab to the museum, barely managed to catch the door from closing the whole way by shoving her foot in — which, ow — and then having to almost limp from the cab to the doors of the museum. Her shoes were cute, but they were not designed for holding open doors, and the way her right little toe was throbbing, it might have been better to have left the clutch in the room and have just asked the front desk for an extra key. 

 

The feeling that she would have been better off to just stay in her hotel room was compounded when she walked through the museum doors. While her dress was nothing to sneeze at, it was very clearly not in the same category as the dresses the upper levels Star City women wore. Not the same zip code, and probably not even the same state. Her halter-top dress from Saks Fifth Avenue had taken a large chunk of her paycheck to get, so she couldn’t imagine how much some of the other dresses must have cost.

 

The good news was that she wouldn’t have to wait in a line for coat check when she was done with her evening here. Given the amount of guests circling that area, diving in whenever there was an opening to divest themselves of furs and fancy woolen coats, it counted as a win in her book.

 

With the amount of money she had donated to the museum in order to attend tonight, it made sense that most of the attendees were from the higher classes. Felicity had decided that it was worth it to get a closer look at the  _ quipu _ , snap her own photos with her phone, and to really enjoy the first vacation in a long time. There were plans that involved eating her way around the buffet, and maybe going twice to the dessert table.

 

The main hall of the museum was already bustling with people and full of noise as she made her way inside. High topped cocktail tables were scattered around the perimeter, and a raised platform held a small string group — five was a quintet, right? — quietly playing as people moved about. A waiter passing her by offered her a glass of wine that she happily took. Not only would it serve as a drink, but it could double as a social shield if it was needed. 

 

Her plate full of nibbles, Felicity took a spot at an empty table close to the band and tried to get some weight off of her foot. Though, was it a band if there was only one sort of instrument being played? Mind half on the music, she let her gaze fall over the room, taking it in, mapping out her path for the evening. 

 

The items that were up for auction that night were spread around the main hall in their various cases and stands. Directly across from her, but on the other side of the marble floor, was the entryway into the new exhibit hall, a banner proclaiming the opening date as tomorrow. She knew that eventually she would have to join the crush of people trying to get through the bottleneck that was beginning to form at the entryway. Maybe during the auction itself things would be less busy, and she would be able to make her way in. The  _ quipu _ itself was somewhere in the exhibit hall, allowing full access to the attendees.

 

Although, she hadn’t thought ahead this far. What if they didn’t display it with the lid off? What if there were too many people for the delicate metal formed into knots to be left out to the air? She didn’t think there would be time for a specially sealed case to have been made to put it in, at least not here. It wasn’t a new development though, that it was going to be on display tonight. Given what she had read about the Merlyn family, it also seemed highly unlikely that Malcolm Merlyn would let a very valuable piece of a private collection out of his hands, even if just for an evening, if every safeguard possible hadn’t been in place.

 

Felicity let out a deep breath she hadn’t been completely aware she had been holding. Crisis averted. Of course the insides and the knots would be on display. Otherwise it would be just a wooden box, and while old, would not be nearly as interesting. 

 

Even she would not have been excited to see it if it was just a wooden box, regardless of its age or importance.

 

Finishing her drink, she glanced around, trying to see where others were bringing their dishes. The elite forces of Star City never had to bus a table a day in their life, it seemed, and they certainly weren’t about to start that now. Plates were haphazardly strewn around the table, napkins half on them while they rested on uneaten food. Feeling more than slightly upset with herself, Felicity left her dirty dishes at the table, abandoning them in favor of mingling now that her foot wasn’t throbbing. 

 

Other attendees were either at their tables, talking with friends and acquaintances, though a few were starting to take turns around the open floor space in front of the orchestra. Off to her right was a display case that was surrounded by attendees gesturing at it in excitement. She could have sworn that she heard the name Queen mentioned, and in retrospect, it was probably the reason Felicity found herself going closer to the group.

 

An imposing man was standing within arm’s reach of the stand, clearly some sort of security judging on how he was holding himself. While she knew that she was short, Felicity had thought she looked as though she was closer to average height with her heels on. It was a big reason she enjoyed wearing them as much as they did try to murder her toes. Standing next to Security Guy, she felt like he could have crushed her between his forearm and bicep and not have broken a sweat. He was Gulliver to her Lilliputian stature.

 

The only thing that saved him from looking terrifying was a bored, but amused look on his face as he surveyed the room. Then he caught her staring at him and gave Felicity a smile. She felt her face heat up a moment at being noticed staring like that, and quickly turned her attention to the item that he was guarding.

 

It was an arrow head. 

 

Not just a random arrow head either. No, it was  _ the _ arrow head that the Tomb Raider Queen had used to decipher the journal at her kitchen table. The arrow head that had started this whole fiasco and had her taking days off of work in order to fly across the  country to stare at a box with knots to find a city that probably didn’t even exist.

 

On a lovely little plaque under the artifact itself was written “donated by O. Queen” which really just sealed the deal there. He hadn’t needed it after she had finished with her translation, and instead of bringing it back to wherever he had found it, he had donated it for auctioning that night.

 

At least he did donate it for auction, Felicity thought. He didn’t just sell it and pocket the cash for his own expenses. Unless he got some of the proceeds from the sale tonight. He probably would earn at least a percentage, if only as a thank you sort of thing. She closed her eyes and counted in a deep breath before counting it out. What he had done with his property was neither here nor there. Even if he had done better than what she had originally expected of him.

 

No, the problem was that if he had donated the arrow head for tonight, then he was probably here too. Probably to look at the  _ quipu _ just as she was. 

 

Turning her back on the arrow head, Felicity made her way over to the entrance of the exhibit hall, joining the line to get inside. It would be better to get this all out of the way now, when she could use the crowd of people to hide in. She really didn’t want to run into Oliver again, to have to be reminded about how he had kissed her, then left her breakfast as thank you. And while she wasn’t a spy or an explorer or anything like that, she, Felicity Megan Smoak, was a certified genius and  _ knew _ how to blend in. If nothing else, marathon viewings of Chuck,Alias and Burn Notice had at least instilled  _ some _ knowledge of hiding in plain sight into her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the idea of a quipu seems familiar, you're right! I borrowed the idea from the Clive Cussler Book named Inca Gold, only there it was a calendar, instead of a map.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks, as always, to adiwriting and ohemgeeitscoley for beta work.
> 
> Art in this chapter is by the exceptionally talented riskpig
> 
> There is a Buffy quote in this chapter too. Cookies if you find it!

As Felicity had thought, once she made it through the bottleneck of the doorway, the hallways and rooms beyond opened up allowing for ease of movement. As in the main hall, waiters were circulating with glasses of wine and other drinks, and a few more were carrying trays of food. She spied one who had what looked like mini grilled cheese sandwiches in tiny little cups of tomato soup and abruptly changed course to follow after him.

 

Two of the little sandwiches later, Felicity resumed her search for the _quipu_. While she did enjoy walking around in the exhibit, she knew that it was getting closer to the beginning of the auction since the halls were slowly emptying out.  All the better for her to spend more time in the exhibit itself. There was no chance she would be able to afford any of them items and she didn’t want to have to risk seeing, or being seen by, one O. Queen.

 

From the corner of her eye, she noticed a small alcove lit with spotlights. Breaking free from the river of people, she glanced inside. It was the _quipu_ , the entire reason she had come to Star City. With the lights illuminating every angle, it was easy to make out the finer details even through the thick glass case surrounding it. What she had originally thought were colored skeins of thread or fabric were shimmering with a metallic gleam that had been hard to see in photos. Thin strips of painted metal formed a pattern hanging from the middle of the box. While the color had rubbed off in many places, there was still enough remaining to tell what was originally there. Red and blue were the most common, followed by a few strands of green woven in with them.

 

A colorless strand hung from close to the left side, a knot in the metal halfway done. It was the only one she saw that didn’t have any remains of paint on it, leaving no indication what color it might have been.

 

Wishing she had her tablet with her, Felicity pulled her phone out of her clutch and opened the camera app. She took a few snaps of the _quipu_ as a whole before starting to zoom in. She could piece it all together later on her tablet, a composite image that would actually have enough detail to be just as good as having the real thing in front of her.

 

“You’re not supposed to take photos of the exhibits, you know.”

 

Felicity almost dropped her phone in surprise at the sudden intrusion into her alcove. Reacting quickly, Oliver caught it and handed it to her with a smile. “Would hate to have this break on you.”

 

 

“Bell! Collar,” Felicity shot at him, snatching her phone back. “Look into it!”

 

“Felicity, it’s a museum exhibit, not the ladies room.”

 

Biting her tongue, Felicity let out a sigh. He was right. He was also in a tux.

 

Dammit.

 

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “You just surprised me is all.”

 

He gave her a smile, the same smile he had given her the night they had translated the journal together. It wasn’t the Ollie Queen smile that graced tabloids and top ten lists. It was one that reached his eyes, making them sparkle with laughter. “I’ll admit you surprised me too. I wasn’t expecting to run into Portuguese reading librarians here in Star City.”

 

“I hate mysteries,” she admitted after a moment. “I dug a bit after you left, remembering you had mentioned Merlyn Global. One thing led to another and here I am.”

 

“It’s good to see you,” he told her. Felicity glanced up from her phone in shock. He was glad to see her? “I’ve been looking at this for the past fifteen minutes and I can’t make heads or tails of it.” Oliver shoved his hands into his pockets and turned to look at the display case. “I could use your help figuring out what it means.”

 

“At least you can’t sell this off after you’re done with it,” she told him. He made a questioning noise and turned his head slightly to look at her. “Like you are with the arrow head.”

 

“That wasn’t mine to begin with. It’s better than giving it back to the original owner of it. I can earn a bit to help fund this expedition, wherever it might take me.”

 

He had taken it from someone else? That didn’t sound like the Oliver she had gotten to know over her apartment table and late night takeout. It didn’t sound like any member of the Queen family really. As much as she was loathe to admit it, they did have a skewed set of morals. None of them ever took from an already established find, they did the work themselves to find it, and shared the finding with the press, if not the items.

 

So who had the original owner of the arrow head been?

 

“You aren’t in the habit of taking things that don’t belong to you then?” Felicity’s words were out before she could think about them, and she saw a flash of pain go across Oliver’s face. Stupid lack of brain to mouth filter. “I’m sorry,” she backtracked. “I’m really on edge tonight and I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”

 

He pulled his hands out of his pockets and turned to face her head on. It was disconcerting to have his full attention on her, to say the least. Again, she was reminded just how intense he could be, how expressive his face was. To a passerby, it might look like they were just two attendees who shared a common interest. She could see his eyes though, and the concern that had appeared when she mentioned that she was on edge.

 

“What’s wrong? Everything okay?”

 

Once again, he was making it very hard to actively dislike him. Not that she wanted to keep disliking him, but the more she got to know him, to spend time with him, the more it was clear that he was not the Indiana Jones But With Less Morals, that the press had made him, and the rest of his family, out to be. Emotions swirling in her stomach, Felicity took a deep breath as she put her phone back into her clutch.

 

“I’m fine. Really. Just not used to feeling this out of place.” She motioned down at her dress, at herself in general, before looking back up at Oliver. And had he always been this tall? “I’m used to fitting in, being unnoticeable. But then I’m here and yes, I’m wearing a dress that I am pretty positive costs more than my first computer, but I stick out like a sore toe if I look at everyone else and what they are wearing. I thought I was doing really well at blending in, but then you found me so easily...” Felicity trailed off with a half hearted little shrug.

 

Her shoes were really good shoes, she decided, staring intently down at them. For all of the foot pain that the night had started with, they did look cute. The heels made her legs look amazing too, a fact that she was going to take total advantage of once she was back in New York and not at this fancy party with Oliver Queen.

 

“I don’t think I could ever not see you.” Oliver’s voice was so soft that she immediately lifted her head, meeting his eyes with her own in order to confirm that yes, she had just heard him admit that, it hadn’t been in her head at all. “You’re a remarkable woman, Felicity.”

 

An image of a gif of a hedgehog hiding its head flashed through her mind’s eye as she struggled not to immediately hide behind her hands or turn pink or anything like that.

 

“You’re rather remarkable yourself,” she admitted after a second’s pause. It had slipped past her filter and was voiced before she could manage to stop it, but it was one of the few times she had a sentence she didn’t regret saying come out.

 

Oliver smiled at her, but said nothing, instead turning his attention back towards the _quipu_. “Now that you’ve seen it, any thoughts? I thought it might have been a type of calendar at first.”

 

“That’s not a bad guess,” she admitted. Felicity took a few steps closer to the case, resting her palms against the top to get a better look. “What would each knot represent then? If the blue meant water, maybe the knots could be tides and the space between the time between them?”

 

“It’s possible,” he said.  She could feel his body brush up against hers when he moved closer. “I would hazard a guess that it would be harder to keep track of tides if they weren’t near the ocean though. If they were, El Dorado would have been found by now. Or at least the remains of it.”

 

He had a point there, she was forced to admit. He had been deciphering clues and maps for longer than she had, so it made sense that it came more easily to him than it did her.

 

She felt her eyes widen as she backtracked through her thoughts.

 

“Maps!”

 

She grabbed at Oliver’s hand where it was next to hers on the glass and spun to look at him.

 

“What if it’s a map?” Tracing the blue strands with her left hand, she stopped about halfway down on one in the middle of the collection. “These could be rivers. Or streams.”

 

“The green would be the forest around them then,” he agreed. “Can I borrow your phone?”

 

Felicity pulled it out, but paused for a second before handing it over. “Why my phone?”

 

“I haven’t had time to upgrade mine yet. Yours has better resolution for photos.” Using his height to their advantage, Oliver held the phone directly above the _quipu_ , snapping a few photos from the only angle Felicity had not been able to get earlier.

 

“Can you email those to me?” he asked, offering it back. “I would do it myself, but we already established I’m not on top of technology. I am just figuring out emojis now. I’m not sure if I’m prepared for emailing from things other than a computer.”

 

His teasing and smile was infectious and Felicity was quickly smiling back as she tapped open her phone’s email client to forward the photos onto him. “I don’t think you’re quite as much as a computer luddite as you would like us all to believe, Mister Queen.”

 

The teasing and comradery that had begun to develop between them fell apart as quickly as Oliver’s face did when he reached into his tux’s pocket for his poor, ill-treated flip phone. “Yes, Digg?”

 

Keeping one eye on him, she put her phone carefully back into her clutch, not sure what to make of the sudden shift from the light and easy conversationalist she had been talking with to the now serious and intense man in front of her. She had only seen it once before, right when they had first met and he was trying to get away from the man who had been after him. She shuddered at the memory of Slade.  And yes, prior to now they had only seen one another that one time, but Felicity’s gut was telling her that something was, in fact, very wrong.

 

Oliver’s voice deepened as he ended his call with “Keep an eye on him. Thank you, John.” He snapped his phone shut and leaned heavily on the glass case in front of them, letting out a long sigh.

 

“Everything okay?” She had asked the question before she could second guess herself, the words tumbling out in concern she never thought she would feel for a man she had been around for only a few days.

 

He pushed back and stood straight, slipping his phone into his pocket again. Smoothing out non-existent wrinkles that had formed on his jacket he flashed her a smile. Unlike previous smiles, it didn’t show in his eyes.

 

“Just an unexpected guest is all. My security, Mister Diggle, was calling to let me know.” The worried creases on his forehead softened and he caught Felicity’s eyes again. “Take care, Felicity. I hope that your evening goes more smoothly than mine is going to.”

 

What had felt like a tiny alcove before when Oliver had been in it with her suddenly felt just as large as the atrium itself once he was gone. She wondered just who the unexpected guest he had been talking about was. Maybe an ex that things had ended on the wrong side of things? Or the original owner of the arrow head come back to collect his belongings.

 

If it was the owner of the arrow head, there was a good chance that it would leave the museum before the auction could happen. While she didn’t think that she would need the markings to figure out the _quipu_ , or that she could translate them as Oliver had been, there was something to be said about being prepared as a just in case sort of thing.

 

Back in the main drag of the exhibit hall, Felicity felt briefly like a salmon swimming upstream. More and more people were wandering in from the atrium, creating a press of people that was almost impossible to avoid being crushed within. Moving quickly between brief openings, she felt more like she was dancing than walking, a feeling that was intensified the closer she came to the entrance and could hear the string quartet playing. With a final hop-step that left her thinking there should be some sort of applause for that bit of grace, Felicity found herself back in the cooler air of the atrium. She made her way over to the arrow head, pulling her phone out of her clutch with the intent to snap a few quick photos.

 

The person who had been guarding it before was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was a broad-shouldered man staring down at it, his back to her. She moved to his left, not wanting to block his view when she began to take photos and concentrated on making her damn camera app focus.  

 

“A remarkable artifact,” he said. Felicity aimed her phone at an angle as he talked, trying to get the flash to not reflect off the plexiglass. “I understand why you would want a photo of it.”  

 

His voice was accented, Australian, perhaps. Though some of the vowels reminded her of Manhattan and home. She zoomed in on her screen for a close up of the writing inscribed on the stone and absently nodded.

 

“Did Oliver not allow you to examine it when he had it in his possession? One would think he would have better manners as you were helping him to decipher it.”

 

“He did, but I would rather have a way to look at it on my own now that he is gone with it,” Felicity said.

 

She looked up to smile at the other man, to thank him for allowing her to get in his way for a moment, and she felt her stomach drop. Oliver. He had mentioned Oliver and knew that she had been helping him. Aside from herself and Oliver, there was only one other person who knew they had been working together. Hoping she wasn’t right, and rather dreading the fact that she knew she probably was, Felicity forced her gaze to move from his tie and up to his face to meet his eyes.

 

Eye.

 

As the other was covered by the eyepatch she had really been hoping not to see.

 

Slade Wilson gave her a smile that was as reassuring as a shark showing its teeth before holding out his hand. “I don’t believe we have officially met yet, Miss Smoak. I’m Slade Wilson.”

 

She didn’t move to take his hand. “Officially or not, I think you firing a gun at us counts as meeting.”

 

Slade tilted his head in a small nod and dropped his hand to his side. “You aren’t wrong there, I suppose. Though, to be fair, emotions and tensions were running high that day. I will be the first to admit that I am not normally prone to such outbursts.” He turned, attention back on the arrow head below the case. Tracing the writing with the tip of his finger, he said, ”However at the time, Oliver had just taken this from my possession, after we had spent close to a month and a half tracking it down together.”

 

He caught her eye and smiled as though they suddenly shared a secret, and Felicity had to fight back a shudder that threatened to escape. “I still don’t think bringing a gun into a public area and then open firing was the best way to get his attention.”

 

“Perhaps not. It was the only way I could think of to get the attention of such an obstinate boy though.”

 

“Personally, I prefer determined.” Oliver’s voice was clear behind her and she felt her knees almost give out at the relief that rushed through her veins. “It just sounds better.”

 

She could feel the heat from his body behind her. Against her better judgement, she leaned back a bit until Felicity could feel him physically there. A large, warm, well dressed security blanket.

 

“Mister Queen, such a surprise to find out that you were offering up my own property for sale this evening. I almost didn’t reach the museum in time to register for the bidding.” Slade held out his hand to Oliver in a mirror image from his attempt with Felicity before. Oliver, unlike herself, actually took it, and shook. Their grips were clearly tighter than normal on the other’s hand, but neither loosened their grip until an unspoken signal passed between them.

 

“What a shame that would have been,” Oliver responded.

 

In the back of her mind, the part that wasn’t currently panicking and trying to figure out a way to not be in the middle of the two men, there was a part of her that was impressed with how even Oliver was keeping his tone. It was as though he hadn’t just been shot at by Slade only a month prior.

 

“At least now I have had the pleasure of meeting your Miss Smoak.” Slade dropped his gaze away from Oliver and affected what must have been his attempt at a smile full of charm. If she didn’t know the type of man he was, she might have even believed it. “I can see why you were adamant in rescuing her that day in the library. She is rather…” Slade trailed off.  “She is rather remarkable. A shame she’s staying in little more than a pay by the hour room.”

 

Felicity felt Oliver’s arm wrap around her waist, his hand holding her tight to him  She felt an absurd kinship with how a deer might feel when face to face with a mountain lion with how Slade was looking at her.  

 

“I am not the sort of person who would be found in such a place, thank you very much. No matter what you might think.”

 

He gazed, unblinking, at her face and gave a low chuckle.

 

What was it with bad guys and needing to chuckle. Why did they never have a full on laugh that they went for? As Doctor Horrible had said, it was about standards. Although, chances are that Neil Patrick Harris was about as dangerous as a lop-eared bunny and

 

Eyepatch here could probably kill everyone in the room with a toothpick if he wanted to.

 

So, maybe the dark chuckle thing was working better than she was giving it credit for.

 

“Such courage, Felicity. And bravery, on top of your already brilliant mind.” Slade grabbed for her hand and brought it up to press a quick kiss to her knuckles before letting it go. “Perhaps I’ll stop by after the event concludes tonight, take advantage of your translation services you already so generously offered Mister Queen here. We all do deserve an equal chance at locating such a hidden trove after all. Room 302 at the Holiday Inn, are you not?”

 

The tension that had been mounting between the three of them was shattered when the chairman of the museum board of trustees took the stage and announced the next auction would be beginning in the next few minutes.

 

Felicity felt rooted to the spot next to the arrow head display long after Slade and his eye-patched face were lost to the crowd. He knew where she was staying. Down to the room number and everything. There was no way he could know where she was staying. She didn’t even know where she had been staying until she had arrived to the hotel and had gotten a room assignment.

 

Did he have people following her? Had there been someone following her every move since Oliver had left her apartment the day after their mad dash into the subways? Or maybe he had some sort of notification out on her name and when she had checked in to her hotel it had gone off. Dammit, she should have followed the first rule of being a spy and gone with a different name. Or at least have covered her electronic tracks as she used to do.

 

When had she gotten so out of practice with her own computer skills?

 

A large hand on her shoulder broke Felicity out of her panicked spiral, and she almost jumped out of her skin as she turned around. The large man who had been standing guard over the arrow head before was back, this time looking at her with the same intensity he had been standing guard with earlier. He held up both of his hands and took a step back from her, giving her space that Felicity was very glad to have.

 

“I’m John Diggle. Oliver asked me to keep an eye on you as he had to go make an appearance at the auction itself.”

 

Oliver had left? She hadn’t even noticed him leaving.

 

“You’re who called Oliver earlier tonight, aren’t you,” she asked. His name had reminded her of the phone call that had made Oliver leave earlier that night. “It was about Mister Wilson being here, wasn’t it?”

 

John nodded. “I was supposed to keep an eye out for him. I don’t think Oliver planned on Slade introducing himself to you.”

 

“I don’t think anyone ever plans on him,” she said. “He doesn’t really seem the type of person who believes in plans.  More of a ‘revenge at all cost’ sort of guy.” Although, when she thought about it, that did count as a plan, even if it was lacking anything past step one.

 

“He certainly gives that impression,” John agreed. He nodded towards the dessert table that was nearly empty now that the auction had started. “Can I get you anything?”

 

“Company while I go see which one of those little cream puffs over there looks the best?”

 

“I’d be happy to, Miss Smoak.”

 

“Felicity,” she told John. Being a ‘Miss’ anything had never sat well with her, unless it was a small child. Then it was somehow adorable in a strange way. That was probably one of her other favorite reasons for being a librarian. Small voices asking her for new books to read was always a highlight of her day.

 

It was up there with the way that Oliver said her name.

 

Perusing the desserts that remained, Felicity took a second to admit that she thought about the different ways he said her name far more than she probably should. After tonight, there wasn’t much of a chance that she would be hearing him say it again anytime soon. He would go off to who knew where in pursuit of riches and fame and she would go back to her circulation desk.

 

A wistful part of her had been enjoying the thrill of hunting the fabled Lost City of Gold. Being face to face, and threatened, by Slade Wilson was enough to test anyone’s resolve.

 

Popping a few mini-eclairs onto her plate, she let out a small sigh. It seemed as though the Queen Family would be the one to locate and profit off of finding the location of El Dorado after all. She could only hope that the Oliver she had seen glimpses of earlier that evening would be the one who found it, not the kissing for a distraction Oliver she had first met.

 

“Everything alright,” John asked her.

 

“I’m shaken,” she admitted after a moment. “And I will probably be looking for a new place to stay now that I know Slade knows my hotel and room number.”

 

She forced herself to take a deep breath and consciously tried to relax her muscles. At least she hadn’t been shot at this time. And wasn’t that just a wonderful way of phrasing how crazy her life had become since Oliver had barged into her life like the kissing ninja he was.

 

Even if it hadn’t been meant as a distraction for her.

 

“Or maybe I’ll see if there are any openings on the stand-by lists for flights leaving Star City.”  

 

John raised an eyebrow at her comment, crossing his arms. It easily drew her attention to the tree trunks that were his arms, though she didn’t think that was what he had intended to do. “After everything Oliver has said about you, I honestly didn’t expect you to leave that easily.”

 

Wait, Oliver had talked to John about her? That was...huh. That was unexpected, and not really what she should be focusing on right now. It was strangely reassuring to know that she was on his mind as much as he was on hers.

 

“Normally I’m not one to run at the sign of trouble. Danger is my middle name.” She glanced up and gave John a small smile. “It’s Megan, actually, but I have always kind of wanted to say that. But, regardless, they say there is a first time for everything. And going far away from the One-Eyed Crazy Guy who knows where I’m staying seems like a smart choice. Safer, at least, no matter how much I wish I could keep following this mystery to its end.”

 

Felicity felt, more than saw, Oliver walking towards them as she talked with John about her travel plans. She caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye and quickly moved her attention back towards the billionaire explorer’s bodyguard. Oliver had saved her life what felt like two times at this point though, so maybe that was just something that happened. Becoming more aware of them.

 

Totally something that just happened, and nothing at all to do with how good he looked in a tux or how he had kissed her or how he had complimented her.

 

“If you’re that nervous about him coming after you,” Oliver said, moving to stand between her and John, “you can come home with me.”

 

Despite the fact that she wasn’t drinking anything, Felicity almost choked. “Excuse me?”

 

“Spend the night at my home. It has good security. Digg here can attest to that. And you won’t even have to take a cab to it.”

 

Oh Lord, he was actually serious. Felicity stared at Oliver even as he stared at her. Was he trying to proposition her? She didn’t think so, she wasn’t exactly like what she assumed his normal type might be based on tabloids. Did he just not realize how his offer had come across?

 

For a man she was sure was used to getting everything he wanted though pure determination, the latter seemed far more likely.

 

“Me? At your apartment? Or condo or whatever sort of place you have?” What sort of place might the son of two famous and wealthy treasure hunt...no, tomb raiders, she reminded herself, have as his home? “Your penthouse? God, you probably have a penthouse, don’t you?”

 

“I have a loft, actually,” he told her. By the look on his face, he was more confused than anything else. He seemed almost ashamed of the fact that he had a loft instead of a penthouse. Maybe it was a rich person thing? “And the...the implication of you coming home with me would mean that, yes...to my loft, I mean. To stay there instead of at the hotel?”

 

He trailed off with a hopeful sort of voice and Felicity had to fight to keep her shock from showing. He wanted her to spend the night with him, it sounded like.

 

“Jesus,” John groaned out, shaking his head. “Felicity, the place has two bedrooms. I’ve stayed there once or twice. And Oliver, man. Stop digging yourself into a deeper hole here.”

 

Two bedrooms.

 

That made a lot more sense than the daydream fantasies that had suddenly taken up residence in her brain. She really needed to work on remembering that beneath the sweet persona he seemed to take off and on like a mask, he was still a kissing ninja. She didn’t know which version of him was the real him at this point.

 

Felicity worried at the inside of her cheek while she mulled over the offer of a safe place to stay. “I would need to go back to get my suitcase,” she hesitantly offered. “If I did take you up on that offer.”

 

Oliver nodded and looked at John. A silent conversation passed between them and John took a phone from the inside of his suit before walking a few paces away. “He’s getting someone to bring the car around now,” Oliver told her as way of explanation.

 

“I guess we’ll stop by my hotel on the way then.” It would be super obvious to Slade if he was following them, but maybe that was the point.

 

“No. It’s too risky to do that,” Oliver told her. “Once we’re in the car, you can give John your room key. He’ll swing by, then bring it to the loft.”

 

Had she remembered to actually pack her things back in her suitcase before she had left for the gala? Felicity couldn’t remember. Hopefully she had. She really didn’t need John to have to pick up the tornado of clothes she normally left in her wake when she was traveling.

 

What if her suitcase was open? All her underwear would be right there when he walked in!

 

“I don’t think I can go with you after all,” she blurted out. “I can’t...I paid for the room and it would be a waste of money to not use it, you know?” She fumbled with the empty plate and her clutch, trying to toss the right thing. “Plus, I don’t really want to intrude on any plans that you might have made this evening so I’ll just being going on my way now.”

 

She made a sharp turn on her heel that her mother would be proud of. Her dramatic exit was ruined by Oliver gently placing his hand on her shoulder.

 

“Felicity, please.” She gave a sort of half turn in his direction when he moved his hand. “It’s my fault you’re caught up in all of this to begin with. My fault that Slade has made you into a target. Let me do this for you, please.”

 

“You might have started this, Oliver,” she turned to poke his chest, “but it was my choice to come here. My choice to keep looking into it, and my choice to deal with whatever might happen because of that maniac with one eye.”

 

“You’re remarkable,” he blurted out quietly.

 

Felicity felt her cheeks warm.  She knew she was turning pink as she blushed without meaning to. His unexpected compliment made some of the anger bleed out of her. “Thank you for remarking on it,” she told him, just as quietly.

 

“It isn’t about you not being able to handle this,” Oliver admitted to her softly. They were standing in the middle of the atrium and Felicity felt like they were in a bubble, that time and life were moving on around them while they were inside of their own world. “It’s about easing my mind that I didn’t put someone in danger again.”

 

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what he meant by again. Their intimate bubble was popped by the return of John, who told them that the car was waiting out front. She felt the chaos of the auction and crowd around them rush to displace the stillness that had surrounded her and Oliver.

 

Felicity didn’t follow her gut a lot. Feelings could be enhanced by the moment and lead to rash decisions. Decisions that ended with her five towns over and missing everything but her ID. Knowledge and intelligence and evaluating the decisions were her preferred way to work through problems.

 

There were rare moments though, that her brain and her gut would seem to look at one another and nod in agreement, no questions asked. That she could trust Oliver Queen was one of these moments. So she went with what her gut was telling her to do: take the arm that he had offered her and walk with him to the car that was waiting outside.

 

~~~

 

Felicity woke the next morning to the smell of fresh brewed coffee and the feel of the softest bed ever beneath her. The sun was nicely lighting the room, but wasn’t high enough to shine right into her eyes. With a stretch that had her taking up the entire bed, she gave up going back to bed and getting more sleep in favor of getting a cup of that coffee that she was smelling.

 

She hoped Oliver bought the good coffee and not the cheap pre-ground pound of whatever the grocery store had on sale that week.

 

Though given what she had seen of his home last night, she didn’t expect him to go for that. The open floor plan of the great room was big enough to house her entire apartment back in New York, and the guest ensuite had a shower that could have fit the cast of Firefly in it with room for a second season.

 

Shoving her feet into her slippers, Felicity _thwick-thwicked_ her way into the kitchen, still trying to wake herself up the rest of the way.

 

“Mugs are above the coffee pot,” Oliver told her in way of greeting when she walked into the kitchen. His voice was clear and loud, and clearly he was one of those morning people she had heard about, but never experienced before.

 

Mugs were good for coffee, far better than using a water glass. Through college she had used whatever cups had been clean before when she had needed a caffeine fix, adult her had grown out of that inability to keep clean dishes in the house.  
Mostly.

 

Wrapping both hands around the comically oversized cup of coffee, Felicity shuffled her way over to the table where Oliver was. She stared blankly at the mess of papers and printouts, pens and notebooks that covered it before sort of shoving a pile to the side to put her cup down.

 

“Did you sleep okay?” Oliver asked her once she had taken a few sips of coffee.

 

“Like a rock. Though, rocks don’t sleep. So, maybe saying ‘like a sloth’ would be better,” she responded. Felicity hated how slow her mind was to wake up some mornings, and rubbed at her eyes to try to make them stay open. “How about….” She trailed off as she finally took in Oliver’s appearance, and the mess that was surrounding him.

 

While he had taken off his tux jacket when they had come in last night, it didn’t look like he had gotten any further in removing his dress clothes. His bow tie, which had been perfectly tied last night, hung undone from his neck. The crisp white shirt was untucked from his pants, where suspenders were also just hanging, and had the first few button undone with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.  There was a pen behind one ear, and his hair looked like he had run his hands through it in frustration more than once, sticking up in all directions.

 

Scattered in an arc across from him, there were photographs of the quipu taken the night before, along with scraps of paper filled with notes and his precise handwriting. The notebook Felicity has seen him writing in the first time she had helped him was to the side, but full of smudges, like his hand had dragged tiredly along with the pen as he had made his notes.

 

“Did you even sleep last night?” she asked him, incredulous.

 

Oliver looked up from his notebook, finally, and seemed to realize exactly when he was, and that it was light outside. “That would explain the two pots of coffee,” he said slowly. He glanced down at his mug off to the side before giving her a wry smile. “And why my mug is empty.”

 

“Well,” Felicity offered him her hand, “lay it on me. What did you figure out?”

 

“I’m not a hundred percent sure yet, but I think I might be close to figuring out where it is.”  Oliver rose and set his notebook in her outstretched hand. “I’m leaning towards South America, specifically in the Amazon basin.”

 

If that was all he had garnered from his awake all night City of Gold cram session, it was really no wonder that he hadn’t found El Dorado yet. Felicity could have told him it was in South America, given that El Dorado was a myth from the Incan time. And that the _quipu_ had originally been from there. It didn’t take a genius to figure that much out.

 

“A lot of spoken history regarding El Dorado seems to come from the Venezuelan part of the basin,” Oliver continued from behind her.

 

She heard the sound of coffee beans being poured into a grinder and tuned out the noise to focus on Oliver’s notes. He probably had a point about it being somewhere in Venezuela, she admitted to herself. Which wasn’t something she would have caught, if she was honest. She had always envisioned the big golden city to be along a coast line when she imagined what it must have looked like. Much the way that New York was big and gigantic, seen from afar, El Dorado would have been the same. The reason nothing had been found of it was because the Spanish had destroyed it piecemeal and carried it all away.

 

“Let me grab my tablet,” Felicity told him, finishing her coffee. “I can start putting your notes into something more organized than piles and we can see if there are any other stories about the city that can agree on something. Maybe we can figure out if the _quipu_ is an actual map or not then.”

 

Unlike the last time they had worked together, they didn't eat take out or pizza as they worked. Felicity took over the kitchen table in no time at all, forcing Oliver to the counter. Instead of just reading documents over and over though, while he read, he kept moving. The rattle of pots and spoons broke her out of her organizing and categorizing and Felicity was met with the sight of Oliver stirring what smelled like a really good pasta sauce with one hand, making notes in his journal with the other.

 

“What are you…are you cooking?”

 

“It helps me think,” Oliver told her, glancing up briefly. He took a small taste from the spoon and shook his head. “Needs more garlic.” She watched as he turned down the heat on the stovetop and placed a cover over the pot. “But that can wait until it’s almost ready so I don't lose the taste. What’ve you got?” he asked her, coming back around to the table.

 

“It's not much,” she said. Felicity could feel him standing behind her, reading her screen over her shoulder. While normally she was against screen spying like that, there was something incredibly soothing about his warm muscle-y body leaning halfway into her.

 

Oliver pointed to one of the folders she had open on her screen. The soothing feeling was gone and Felicity pushed his hand away before he could touch her electronics and dirty them up. “What does that one mean, location?” he asked her, ignoring her batting at his hand.

 

“I cross referenced all of the notes you had made,” she explained, opening the folder. “I was able to put together a list of similarly described places that were mentioned.”  

 

Felicity looked at the carefully stacked piles of paper around her, and gave a sigh. “If I had a scanner, I could have actually made a working search engine for you. But this will work as an index to find things, as long as you keep your papers in the same order.”

 

She felt him squeeze her shoulder and she glanced up at him from her chair. “Thank you,” he told her, sincerity clear in his eyes.

 

Felicity could feel herself turning pink as she blushed at his compliment. It wasn't as though she was given them when she managed to find a particularly difficult book at work or anything.

 

She brushed a strand of hair from her face and focused back on her computer. “I can leave this with you on your tablet if you want,” she offered.

 

Oliver gave a grunt of assent and moved back to the pots on the stove. “Anything that is in common with all of the supposed locations?”

 

Glancing back at her tablet, Felicity quickly reread the notes on location she had made. “Umm...mountains...but only in a backdrop sort of way. No one mentions going through any mountain passes, at least.”  

 

She shuffled through a stack of papers, nodding along as she read aloud. “River, a lot of forest. Pretty much everything mentions a big river flowing into the sea.” Felicity shifted in her seat to turn and look at Oliver.

 

For a moment, she was distracted at how easy he moved about in the kitchen. She wasn’t a bad cook by any means, but Oliver had turned it from something needed to feed himself into...into what she wasn’t sure. Just that it seemed more than a chore to be done for him.  

 

Tapping his wooden spoon on the side of a pot, he reached above the stovetop to turn off the heat before facing her. “Sounds like the Amazon River basin might be the best place to start looking then.” He tugged at the undone bowtie still around his neck and let it slither off into his hands. “I’m going to go make a few phone calls, get changed. Maybe I can call in a favor to get on a flight to Venezuela later today.”

 

The way he was talking quietly to himself, Felicity wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be responding or not. Or if he even remembered she was right there in his kitchen. When he started stripping his dress shirt off before he had completely cleared the room, she was positive he had forgotten she was there. She felt herself blushing and quickly averted her eyes from his very nice, very broad back, and the way the muscles looked as they moved under his skin.

 

What would it be like to touch...Nope. She shut the thought behind a mental door that would stop even the Juggernaut and refused to let it go any further.

 

Forcing her attention away from thoughts of muscles and backs and watching muscles in backs move, Felicity saved her makeshift indexing program. She knew that somewhere in her luggage she had a spare flash drive she could leave behind for Oliver, in case he needed to recheck any of the information he had gathered.

 

He did deserve that much of her. He had let her spend the night after Slade let slip that he knew where she was staying while visiting. While Oliver might spend the rest of his life stumbling around the Amazon jungle in South America, at least she had repaid her debt to him for that.

 

It was the only reason she was helping the Queen Family Heir locate what should be designated a world heritage site and preserved for forever. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was enjoying the thrill of the hunt or spending time with him or that maybe he wasn’t as bad as the papers and magazines had made him out to be.

 

“You found a flight out tomorrow, right?”

 

Felicity bolted upright, startled out of her thoughts by Oliver’s sudden reappearance in the kitchen. Someone, at some point, should tell him that he was buying tshirts that were a size smaller than what he actually needed. It wasn’t going to be her, but someone needed to make sure he was aware of it.

 

“Bright and early, yeah. Why?” she asked, powering down her tablet. Time to go flash drive hunting.

 

“John’ll come by and take you to the airport. Then you don’t have to call a cab,” he explained. Oliver dropped a rucksack on the floor before disappearing down the hall again. “I’ll probably be gone by then, so help yourself to coffee, toast. Whatever,” he called back to her.

 

“Where are you going?” Felicity followed him towards the bedrooms. Her extra flashdrive was probably in her carry on, not the suitcase itself, now that she thought about it. It would be less to have to search through.

 

“You told me it was in Venezuela,” he said. Like that explained everything.

 

“But you don’t know where. It’s a big country.”

 

Standing outside the door, she was able to watch him put together another travel bag. This one was rain gear, a tent, and other camping things. Felicity felt a mental shudder creep down her spine. The one time she had tried camping had been back in Vegas as part of the local Girl Scout troupe. Camp Foxtail had been a disaster of sprained ankles and poison ivy and had been a large part of why she had refused to be a scout again the next year.

 

Oliver looked over his shoulder and gave her a shrug. “I’ll figure it out. Talk to people. Someone’s gotta speak enough English there to play guide into the jungle.”

 

He was really going to go fly into a country on a whim and then stumble around with some poor unsuspecting person in hopes of tripping over a city no one had ever been able to find? There was no way that anyone could actually be that...that damn cocksure!

 

“Fine, go be an ugly American,” Felicity snarked, annoyance coloring her words. That’s what she got, she supposed, for forgetting just who Oliver actually was. Oliver Queen.

 

It might have been petty, but she made sure to slam the door to the guest room closed. He could work without her program. He had been doing such a bang up job of running headfirst into this without her so far, it’s not like he actually needed her help.

 

She would go home tomorrow and go back to real life, she decided, angrily tossing her things back into her suitcase. And she wouldn’t think one more thought on Oliver and Eyepatch or how the two would somehow end up dead from a strange new spider in the rainforest.

 

For dinner, Felicity snacked on the rice krispy treats she had packed in her carry on, refusing to answer the knock on her door. Just like she didn’t answer Oliver when he told her that the leftovers would be in the fridge if she wanted anything and to help herself. It wasn’t like she was going to need her snacks on the flight home. She could always pick something up after security if she really got hungry.

 

The door into the loft closing is what made her wake up the next morning.

 

Laying in the bed made from clouds, she strained to hear any movement from outside of her room.

 

He had done it. Oliver had actually left, and she was alone in his home while she waited for his… for whatever John Diggle was to pick her up and take her to the airport.

 

She grumbled about overly trusting billionaires as she dragged her luggage into the main room to wait. Glancing into the kitchen, Felicity noticed that the kitchen table was still covered in the notes and papers and printouts she had gone through yesterday. There were a few new bright yellow sticky notes that hadn’t been there before, and curiousity got the better of her.

 

It looked like he had been making notes last night, trying to figure out the meaning of the quipu. They were stuck onto a photo of the knotwork, ideas on what each strand or knot might mean written down before being crossed off.

 

A book off to the side caught her attention, and she frowned at how it had been left spine up. The pages were face down, and Felicity would bet that if she picked it up, she would be able to see straight through the binding and to the other side. Clearly Oliver had no idea of the proper way to treat a book if he left them open like this.

 

Which, really, spoke volumes --ha!--about his character.

 

The world atlas was open to a two page map of Venezuela when she picked it up. Tracing her finger over the Orinoco River, Felicity took a moment to imagine what it would be like to see something like that in person one day. The bugs and humidity and heat would probably be awful, but the experience would be amazing.

 

At least she had gotten the chance to see the quipu with her own eyes. That was something in it’s own right.

 

Somewhere, in one of the spots on this map, was where El Dorado supposedly was. Closer to Caracas, maybe? Or perhaps deep into the jungle of the Amazonas region, near one of the mountain peaks.

 

Too bad there was no clear map of what the land had looked like at the time that El Dorado existed. Except for the quipu. And even that was just a thought on if it was a map or not. There was no text key that went along with it, no helpful bit of paper that explained the colors and knots.

 

Some of the locations in the atlas, and the distances between them, niggled at the back of her head, like an itch she couldn’t scratch.

 

The overlay of gridlines on the map was useful for locating some of the notable locations listed off to the side of the page. Again she was struck by how much easier it would have been if a map had been found for El Dorado. “City of Gold--C6” sort of thing.

 

The itching in her head intensified and Felicity grabbed at the photo of the quipu knotwork. Her fingers landed on one of the blue knots that matched up to the mouth of one of the rivers on the map.

 

A red knot was a mountain peak.

 

Was it really that easy? There was no way it could be. Someone would have figured it out long before her if it was so simple a solution. Or maybe everyone had been so sure it wasn't that easy that they had overlooked the obviousness in front of them.

 

She shoved the photo into the atlas and rushed to the door, opening it to reveal a surprised John Diggle on the other side, hand poised to know.

 

“Take me to the airport,” she said by way of greeting, trying to push past him.

 

“That's what I'm here to do.”

 

“Not my airport,” she called over her shoulder. The elevator door was still open at the end of the hall. They might make it to it before it closed if she hustled. Bless the shoe gods she had gone with running shoes today instead of the cute heels she had debated.

 

“What airport then?” John’s arm shot out to stop the elevator doors from closing. “Felicity what's going on?”

 

All her thoughts were in a jumble, trails of clues connecting and branching out as she tried to work through all of the  
implications of just what the quipu was. “The Oliver airport. The airport he's at right now.”  

 

She tilted her head and looked John Diggle in the eye. “I know where El Dorado is.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to ohemgeeitscoley for comma wrangling in this chapter, and to adiwriting for first round edits. I couldn't do it without you ladies!
> 
> Chapter art is, again, by the talented nightkeepyr
> 
> There is a cameo appearance by one of my favorite Uncharted characters. You'll know it when it happens.

 

 

When she had asked John to rush her to the airport, she had hoped that Oliver hadn't left yet. That she would have a chance to tell him she knew were El Dorado was based on the  _ quipu _ . The sight of Oliver getting into an old dual prop airplane had her racing out of the car and onto the private airstrip, trying to yell his name out over the engines.

 

 

An older man was reaching out to close the airplane door. He looked at her a moment before yelling over his shoulder, “Friend of yours, Queen?”

 

 

“Who are you talking--” Oliver’s head poked around the frame of the aircraft and his eyes widened. “Felicity, what are you doing here?”

 

 

The other guy, maybe the pilot of the plane, held a hand out to her and helped her hop into the plane. “You two wanna talk, do it. But make sure you strap in first. Only got a small window from Control for takeoff since  _ someone _ couldn't wait for an actual  clearing in flight space.”

 

 

He gave a shake of his head and let himself fall into the pilot’s seat.

 

 

Felicity took a seat at the window across from the door as she looked up at Oliver. “I figured out what all the knot work on the  _ quipu _ means,” she yelled over the engines. 

 

 

She was louder than she would have liked to be when the loud whine was cut down as Oliver closed the door. “I know what they all mean,” she repeated, voice quieter now. “The red knots are the larger mountain peaks--”

 

 

“Put on your seat belt,” Oliver said, cutting her off. 

 

 

She worked very hard to hold back the huff of annoyance at his insisting on a seat belt. It wasn't like they were going to be flying while she was still on the plane. Stupid FAA regulations about keeping a belt on until they were off the tarmac. Who was going to notice if she wasn't wearing one except for her or Oliver or the pilot guy.

 

 

Given that their pilot was currently lighting up a cigar in the cockpit, Felicity didn't think that she really had much to worry about in terms of flight restrictions.

 

 

Absently, she reached for the seat belt dangling down and clicked it together. “The red knots are mountain peaks, important ones, at least,” she began again. Opening up the atlas still clutched in her hands, she pulled out the photo of the  _ quipu _ she had shoved in. “Those match up with these peaks here, here and here.”

 

 

A brush of Oliver's hands over her shoulders made her shiver. Thankfully, he either didn't notice, or was too nice to comment on it and he settled back into his seat, pulling the two shoulder straps over before connecting the seat belt itself. 

 

 

“I assumed the blue always meant rivers, but I wasn't sure what the knots meant,” he said.

 

 

“Maybe wide spots?”

 

 

He shook his head. “Fishing spots, maybe river mouths?” He heaved out a sigh and settled back into his chair. “It isn't like we don't have plenty of time to toss around ideas on the way.”

 

 

“Oh, no, I'm not…” Felicity trailed off, noticing the intensity of the engine sounds growing. It matched the growing dread in the pit of her stomach. As much as she didn't want to look, she peered out the window next to her. 

 

 

It was indeed the ground moving past at a high speed. Which then went from horizontal, which all ground should be, to a vertical sort of feeling, pressing her back into her chair.

 

 

“Oliver why is the plane taking off?”

 

 

“It beats the alternative to not taking off, don’t you think?”  He looked her straight in the eye. His voice was so dry she wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.

 

 

“That...that’s not what I…” He had a point that taking off was better than crashing off the end of the runway. It hadn’t been the actual question she had been asking though. She was positive that Oliver was aware of that too, and had decided to be all dry wit with her. That answered the question of was he joking or not, at least.

 

 

“Why do you have to be so infuriating,” she demanded to know.

 

 

He turned in his seat as best as he could given the harness to give her his full attention. Like the other times she had been on the receiving end of his complete awareness, it was both an amazing feeling, and uncomfortable one. There was no way she could escape him. Even if she wanted to, a small part of her mind added.

 

 

“Why do you,” he asked slowly, “keep helping me when it’s clear you don’t think I’m a good person?” 

 

 

In that moment, somehow even the engines on the plane went silent. 

 

 

Of course he wasn’t done though. “You have made it clear since day one that you have disapproved of me, and my attempt to find El Dorado. So why did you help me translate? Why index my notes, or come to Star City?”

 

 

“It’s where the  _ quipu _ was,” she said quietly. “I didn’t come here to see you.”

 

 

He nodded, and Felicity felt a strange sort of pride as he at least conceded that point to her.  

 

 

“You have made it known from the start that you’re a librarian, that you don’t like my family, or me. That you don’t approve of what we do. What  _ I _ do.” She watched Oliver ran a hand through his hair as he tried to find words. “You made it pretty clear yesterday about your thoughts on the matter,” he said. 

 

 

She didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond. The edges of the atlas were cutting into her hands, she was gripping it so tight. He was right. She had been rather clear about what he should do with her shoe and his butt. 

 

 

Felicity shifted in her chair and looked out the window. They weren't so high off the ground that she couldn't see the cars and houses. This was the part of flying she usually enjoyed, when everything looked like small toys. It didn't distract her like it normally did, her thoughts too wrapped up in themselves regarding Oliver's words.

 

 

She  _ had _ been rather hot and then cold with him. The first time they met, it had been because of a kiss and a need for a distraction. Every time since, it had been because of her though. Felicity had made the choice to help him translate in the library, to run when Slade Wilson had attacked, not just hide.

 

 

There was no one who had forced her to bring him home to her small apartment as a place to hide, or share in take out with him while they worked to decode the journal. 

 

 

One of the first things she remembered her mom teaching her was to never judge a book by its cover. It was advice that had served her well through her life, and the irony of being a librarian and working with books and covers every day was not lost on her. 

 

 

Admitting to herself that she had been guilty of judging on that first impression with Oliver cut deep. It made her stomach want to twist around itself , and she wished she could somehow curl up smaller in her seat. It was even worse when Felicity realized that she hadn’t been mentally trying to distance herself from him due to their first meeting. No, Oliver had apologized right before he had kissed her, and she was the one who had chosen to talk further.

 

 

She had judged him on name alone. Based on what she knew of the Queen moniker.

 

 

Oliver had told her that night in her kitchen why he was searching for El Dorado. He wanted to be his own person, not just “Robert and Moira Queen’s son.” Here she was, doing just that. Felicity had only thought of him as Oliver  _ Queen _ , rather than the Oliver she had gotten to know.

 

 

Oliver who liked greasy pizza and could eat with chopsticks. Who liked to cook because it helped him think and who left books open with the spine facing up in a way that sort of hurt her soul. She glanced down at the atlas in her lap and worked to force her fingers to lose a bit of their grip. The nail markings she was putting in the cover probably wouldn’t help anything. 

 

 

He wasn’t a bad person. 

 

 

At all.

 

 

She let her head fall back against the headrest and winced at the dull pulse of pain. Like the rest of the plane, it wasn’t as comfortable as it looked. Closing her eyes, she tried to work out the other part of his question: why was she here?

 

 

Working at a library was something she had really fallen into, not something she had ached to achieve. Not like her childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut and going to Mars. Which, okay, good news there, she hadn’t lost out on that yet. Not that the space program seemed to be headed that way, but it was still something that  _ could _ happen one day. 

 

 

Right after she got up the courage to do laser eye surgery and pigs flew, but hope springs eternal.

 

 

There was a small bit of excitement in everyday life working in the NYPL System. Figuring out what books a person was looking for based on half remembered names or plots, or running a summer course on Coding 101 for kids. It was solving a mystery.

 

 

Computers and hacking, 1s and 0s, they were always something different. It was rare that it was the same problem twice when she was fixing things. 

 

 

Somehow, her work had become routine. Oh, there were fun things here and there, that was true. But Felicity couldn't remember the last time she had felt the same thrill she felt when she was helping Oliver solve the various mysteries about the journal, the  _ quipu _ , the City of Gold itself. 

 

 

That was why she had gone after Oliver. To get that high from adventure she hadn't even realized she had been missing. Which made her even worse than Oliver, really. He had been honest with her since the beginning about why he was doing this. She was the one who was lying about it all, and those lies had been to herself.

 

 

Given that she was on a plane ride to Venezuela with only Oliver and the pilot for company, Felicity knew that she would have plenty of time to think about  _ why _ she was doing this. In the end, it hadn’t taken much longer than five minutes of actually sitting down and not avoiding the question for once. She was doing this, helping to find El Dorado, for herself. She had become just as entranced with the mystery to the point that she wanted to see it through. 

 

 

When she opened her eyes again, there were only clouds beneath the wings. She didn’t know how much time she had spent in her head, but it was apparently enough for them to have gone high enough that the captain probably would have turned off the seatbelt sign and snacks would have gone around if they weren’t in a plane older than she was.

 

 

She shifted in her seat again, and carefully reached a hand out towards Oliver’s arm to get his attention. The leather jacket was soft under her fingers and clearly some sort of heavy duty armor. Oliver didn't even register she was touching him until she squeezed his forearm. 

 

 

It was a very firm forearm. Not much to squeeze. Enough to get a good grip on. 

 

 

Oliver’s right hand covered hers and Felicity lifted her head, startled. His blue eyes were right in front of her, impossible to ignore even if she wanted to. The bit of beard he was sporting looked softer than it had a right to, and his eyelashes were far too long for any guy to have without serious mascara help. 

 

 

“Felicity,” he asked. Goodness, being on the receiving end of his full attention was not something she thought she would ever get used to. 

 

 

She could feel herself starting to blush the longer they stared at one another. For the love of everything, how was it that when she needed to say something, her brain didn't want to work? It had to be him, or some sort of strange superpower he used on her. 

 

 

Pulling her hand out from under his, she brushed a piece of hair from her face and looked down at her hands. “I'm sorry,” she told him. 

 

 

Silence.

 

 

“Did...did you not hear me?” She had been rather quiet with her apology. “I said that I was sorry,” she said a bit louder, raising voice and her head. Felicity noted that he hadn't moved from his prior position, though he was looking confused.  

 

 

“I heard you,” he said slowly, “but I'm not sure I'm understanding you. What, exactly, are you apologizing for?”

 

 

“You were right,” Felicity said. “Before, I mean. I haven't been treating you nice at all, and you have every right to be angry at me and I'm sorry.”  

 

 

She watched as Oliver rubbed at his neck, shaking his head. “I never said that I was angry at you, Felicity.” He reached over and gently took the atlas from her hands. She made to grab after it, wanting the book shield back, but then he grabbed her hands and was completely focused on her again. “I’m just not sure why you are here when the entire time you’ve been vocal about your dislike about my hunt.” He gave her a wry smile. “I believe your exact words might have been tomb raiding?”

 

 

“I...I realized that I was going off of what I thought about your family,” Felicity said quietly. “Not about you. You’ve been clear from the start about why you’re doing this. I’m the one who kept wanting to make it about something other than finding the city and getting credit for it.”  

 

 

Her hands were getting really warm in his. And when she pulled away to grab the atlas again, she immediately tried not to notice how cold she felt. It was her fault for wearing a cute sleeveless shirt instead of her comfy airplane sweatshirt. 

 

 

“I’m the one who kept inviting myself along, getting involved when I didn’t have to,” she continued. “I wanted the adventure you were having, but I didn’t want to admit that to myself. I wouldn’t be the person I thought I was supposed to be if I was off having adventures.”

 

 

“Supposed to be?”

 

 

She gave a small shrug in her seat. “A librarian. I read about the adventures, but I don’t have them.”

 

 

“What do you know about the Brothers Grimm,” he asked her.

 

 

The sudden shift in topic threw her. Apparently they were done talking about feelings while trapped in a flying death trap, which was okay with her. Really. It had been awkward for everyone involved. “Grimm’s Fairy tales,” she said. “Really, Oliver, you should know better than to ask someone who works with books who an author is.”

 

 

“Do you know how they got them? The folk tales for their collections?”

 

 

Maybe going after the goose that laid the golden eggs was the next trip Oliver was going to go on? If there was truth in the legends here, who’s to say there wasn’t a magical goose out there somewhere, popping out 14K eggs every other day?

 

 

“They went out into Germany, before it was Germany, and walked. They walked through the Black Forest, the alps. They talked to people. They traveled to Paris, through Prussia,” he continued on. “They collected these stories and then published them, and then did it again. People started to bring stories to them, but they still visited other cities and villages. Felicity, they went on adventures.”

 

 

After a moment of admiring how  _ good _ Oliver looked when he was passionate about something, Felicity finally found her voice enough to respond. “You’re going to tell me they were librarians, aren’t you?”

 

 

He nodded. “They were librarians.”

 

 

“Know who else was a librarian? And ended up saving the world?  Evelyn Carnahan.”

 

 

“I don’t think I know her.”

 

 

Felicity settled back into her chair, trying to hide her smile. She wasn’t sure how he had missed watching  _ The Mummy,  _ but she wasn’t about to let her pop culture knowledge go to waste! And it would kill time on the way to South America in a far better way than sitting in silence ever would.

 

  
Being strapped into a seat on an airplane with a five point harness was not how Felicity had expected her day to go. Into a seat on an airplane? She had planned for that, even for the lack of leg room. But it turned out that there were worse ways to spend a long flight than talking with Oliver. 

 

 

Even if the bathroom was a bucket in the corner and a shout of “don’t you dare turn around” for privacy.

 

 

There were a few times that she sat with Oliver in the copilot’s chair while his pilot friend, a man named Sullivan, used the bucket. Oliver was clearly comfortable in the cockpit of the plane, and when she asked him where he had learned to fly, it led to a discussion about what their parents had taught them when they were kids.

 

 

She even got the full story about how he and Slade had started working together. Before he had lost an eye, he had been a friend of Moira Queen’s, often helping to finance some of their other endeavors. He had helped Oliver to regain his footing after the news about his parents had hit, taking him on some of his own explorations. It was during one of them that he had lost his eye, forcing him to take time to recover. He had, according to Oliver, dived deep into the myth of El Dorado, and became near obsessed with finding it; Slade became a man possessed and started to take risks he never would have before. 

 

 

Those risks included the lives of people both on his payroll and not, and it had all come to a head in New York City. Slade hadn’t thought twice about killing the previous owner of the arrow head, and Oliver had hoped that by running with it, he could keep Slade from figuring out any of the next steps, and maybe the obsession would fade.

 

 

It hadn’t worked out according to plan.

 

 

They had plenty of time for Felicity to explain her discovery about the  _ quipu _ being a map too, given the eight hours they were going to be flying for.  Using the atlas she had carried along, and Oliver’s notes, they managed to work out what knot represented what location. Some of the once tall mountain areas weren’t as prominent now, so it did make for a harder time decoding, but there was enough information that Oliver was able to freehand a rather impressive map of Venezuela over the  _ quipu _ to narrow down their search area to where the golden knot was.

 

 

She wasn’t positive how Oliver was going to get into the middle of the rainforest without a week long hike and being eaten alive by bugs, or maybe even a panther. That part would probably come after they landed though. The packing of supplies, finding a guide. Oh, maybe Oliver would rent a jeep. Driving a jeep through the jungle always sounded like a fun thing to do.

 

 

Speaking of Oliver, he was making enough noise behind them that Felicity found herself roused out of the nap she had been taking. “Are we almost there,” she asked, turning in her seat to better see him.

 

 

“About as close as we can get,” he responded. “I’m making sure everything is packed up here before we drop out.”

 

 

“Drop out?” She had to have heard him wrong. There was no way he was talking about dropping out of the plane. Maybe pop out? Wheels dropping? Wheels dropping out made more sense. And was safer. A lot safer. Even with the plane that had stuffing coming out of the headrest, it was safer on the plane than to leave it and just sort of hope you landed without dying.  

 

 

“Aren’t we supposed to stay in your seat with your seatbelt fastened until the plane had reached the gate?” she continued. “I’m pretty sure I remember being told that when I landed in Star City. And all of the other times I have flown.”

 

 

“There isn’t a gate, Felicity,” he said, tugging the strap on the large backpack tight. He stood up to look at her. “Besides, how are you planning on getting through customs without your passport or ID?”

 

 

She narrowed her eyes at him, and glared over the top of her glasses. “So your plan is to have us jump out of a perfectly fine airplane instead of waiting for it to land?”

 

 

Oliver slipped his brown jacket on before holding up what looked like a web of straps and buckles. “You’ll be jumping with me, actually. Unless you know how to skydive? I assumed you didn’t, but I might be wrong.”

 

 

Damn her for wanting an adventure. 

 

 

At least she had on shoes that were good for walking.

 

 

There were probably things Felicity had done in the past that had, in the moment, scared her so much that she thought she was going to die. The only thing that even came close to falling from the sky and hoping Oliver remembered to pull a string and that a bunch of fabric would hold them was when Slade had been shooting at them back in the library.

 

 

At least during that she had  some measure of control over that situation. And wasn't staring death in the face while wind was taking her breath away and her eyes were watering, but also really dry at the same time. It had been warmer too, because it turned out that the sky was a cold place to just sort of hang out in no matter how close to the equator she was.

 

 

Oliver, of course, being the asshole that he was, hadn't even given her the count of three to prepare like he had promised. No, instead he had jumped at two, an excited whoop loud in her ear even as she tried to catch enough breath to scream while attached to his front in the tandem harness.

 

 

She had to give him credit at the fact that he landed them in a clearing in the middle of the amazon rain forest without snagging any trees on the way down. As soon as they had both touched ground, Felicity began to work the straps on her front. She wanted to get out of the harness as soon as she could, no matter how solid and warm Oliver’s body had felt against her on the way down.

 

 

Dropping the pack that held all of his gear to the ground, she was able to finally reach the buckles and wasted no time at all in stripping the harness off of her quicker than it took to fling her bra off at the end of a long day.

 

 

“I am never, ever, doing that again,” Felicity said, still trying to catch her breath. 

 

 

Oliver stepped out of the harness and began to repack the parachute into the backpack. “Hopefully we won’t have to.”

 

 

Hopefully? Oh no. There was no hopefully about it. She wasn’t going to do it again. Jumping out of a plane once was one time too many for her life. Even though it resulted with her standing in the middle of the rain forest. 

 

 

That part was pretty amazing. Especially given as how she had never been out of the country before, and now here she was, Felicity Smoak, standing in the rain forest to try to finish a hunt for a legend.

 

 

Standing in the rainforest in a sleeveless shirt and cute skinny jeans. Which she was going to have to hike in for who knew how long until they reached the ruins of El Dorado, or found a town or village or something where she could get better clothes. If she didn't die from the tsetse fly or malaria on the way.

 

 

The Amazon Trail game had not prepared her well enough for this!

 

 

“I don't think this is the best idea,” she told Oliver in a panic.  “You can't have packed enough food for two people and I am not dressed for any of this!” She motioned at her clothes, hoping he would understand. He had to have a way to get back out of the jungle when he was ready to, right? He wasn't just going to live in it and become Oliver of the Jungle.

 

 

Although, it wouldn't be bad for him to go around shirtless and swinging from vines. 

 

 

Felicity forced her attention back to the present, grabbing onto the bag that Oliver was handing her. “I was planning on fishing for food, honestly,” he told her. “And seeing what else we might find on the way.”  Her eyes widened as he pulled out a huge looking knife--was that honestly a machete-- from his bag and waved it in her direction. “I can make your jeans into shorts if you want?”

 

 

“I think I will keep my jeans as they are, thank you,” she responded. Honestly, didn’t he know how expensive a good pair of jeans were? What was she thinking, really, of course he didn’t know. Nor did he know how hard it was to  _ find _ a good pair of jeans that fit. It was like finding a needle in a haystack.

 

 

He looked at her for a moment, before giving a slow nod. “If you change your mind, let me know.” He was clearly in his element as he struck out at a brisk pace, large camping bag hefted onto his back and using his freaking machete to chop through any sort of foliage in his way.

 

 

Setting off after him, she grumbled about tall people and their long legs until he finally slowed down enough for her actually keep pace with him.

 

 

Without a watch, she didn’t have really have a lot to tell her how much time had passed since they had landed in the jungle. It felt like it might have been hours, but that could have been her completely winded and out of shape self talking. She was already close to having completely and totally sweat through her clothes, which was uncomfortable by itself, but the last straw for Felicity came when a crack of thunder startled her before the downpour began.

 

 

It was official. She hated the rainforest.

 

 

Or the rainforest hated her.

 

 

It was mutually assured hate.

 

 

The backpack of gear that Oliver had asked her to carry wasn’t helping matters either, and it was getting to a point that she was going to have to stop soon or she was just going to fall over and pass out. Walking through the concrete jungle was one thing, but it clearly had not prepared her for traipsing through an actual jungle. 

 

 

Rain drops splattering against her glasses and face didn’t make anything better. As hot as the temperature was, the rain was making her feel cold and miserable.

 

 

“Why did I think this was a good idea,” she complained quietly. “I’m going to be the person that dies in the beginning of all of the adventure movies as the example of what  _ not _ to do and so the hero knows that he needs to be prepared and that the audience knows it’s all serious.” 

 

 

Felicity barely avoided a large puddle by skirting the edge of it, kicking at and stumbling over a few roots and rocks as she did. Only Oliver quickly grabbing her arm and holding her up stopped her from slipping off of the rain slicked bark and to the ground. 

 

 

“Are you okay,” he asked after she regained her balance.

 

 

“Aside from damaging my ego, I’m fine. Just really hating that I did not prepare at all for this.” She peered up at him from behind her glasses and mentally cursed that she could barely see through them. “I am clearly not cut out for field work. Or jungle work. I could maybe do beach work, if it involved sitting on a towel and reading a book.”

 

 

With, quite frankly, a disgusting amount of ease, Oliver swung his large pack around and unzipped one of the side pouches. She watched him rummage around in it, trying very hard to not appreciate how good he was looking with his shirt wet and sticking to him. 

 

 

“Here,” he said. He brushed his hands over hers, pulling her out of her thoughts of how he might look without the shirt on in the rain. “I should’ve grabbed this out earlier for you.”

 

 

Felicity took the bright yellow rain poncho from Oliver and slipped it on before snapping up the sides. The rain was still hitting her, but just the one layer between her and it was enough to make it not as awful. She pulled up the hood as far as it would go, trying to keep any more from getting into her eyes. 

 

 

“Thank you.”

 

 

He gave her a smile that made her heart melt into a puddle and all sorts of other emotions curl up into a warm ball in her stomach. “Aren’t you going to wear one,” she asked, following behind him at his now far less intense pace

 

 

“I’ve got my jacket,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her. “And you’re wearing the only one I brought.”

 

 

When they made camp a while later, it turned out that he had extra clothes packed too, and offered one of his shirts for her to change into for the night while her clothes dripped dried in the tent. The parachute Oliver had carefully packed away was flung over the small tent to ensure nothing leaked through the roof. 

 

 

The two had a quiet dinner made of supplies Oliver had brought along, during which he finally copped to knowing that she had been retelling him The Mummy's plot earlier on the plane. 

 

 

Felicity threw one of the raisins from her trail mix at him for that. 

 

 

He caught it in his mouth. As if there was any other outcome possible. 

 

 

The forest around them got dark quick, and not even the full moon that she knew was overhead was able to provide much light. There was a small, hand crank light that Oliver brought out, using it to go over the map they two of them had traced over the photograph of the  _ quipu _ ’s knots back on the plane. 

 

 

“If we keep this pace, and I can keep us going the right direction, we should get there tomorrow no problem,” he said from outside the tent. 

 

 

“It's kind of unthinkable,” Felicity called back to him, unzipping the giant sleeping bag Oliver had thrown in when she had been changing before.

 

 

“What is?”

 

 

“You and I. Finding a lost city that's supposed to be made of gold and treasure.”  She spread out the fabric to cover the floor, then rolled up into one side of it, leaving the other open for him. “You can come in now,” she said. 

 

 

“I've been chasing after this myth for almost five years. It's not as unthinkable as you might think.”  He crawled into the tent, leaving his shoes outside. “I'm just dropping this in here,” he held up a small compass, “and then I'll be out of your hair.”

 

 

“Where are you going,” she asked, sitting up from her her sleeping bag burrito. Felicity tried to brush her hair out of her eyes, but the humidity had made it so wispy that it was sort of frizzing all around her face. “Are you doing a keeping watch sort of thing? You take first shift, and you’ll wake me in a few hours so you can get sleep?”

 

 

Oliver rubbed a hand at the back of his next and didn’t meet her eyes. Which she narrowed at him over her glasses even if he wasn’t looking up to see it. “I was planning to sleep outside, actually. Let you have the tent.”

 

 

“And be carried away by monkeys or a flash flood? Or what if some unknown spider comes and bites you, and then you die, and I’m stuck here because of it?”  She hated that she could hear the sound of panic in her voice, especially when she knew, logically, that she was being a bit over dramatic about it. They weren’t near the river, so it would be unlikely there would be a flood. 

 

 

She was stuck on the feeling that the idea of sleeping alone in a tent in the jungle, in the pitch dark night, was causing her to have though. Mainly, total fear. How would she know if it was an animal or Oliver making noises outside, if they were both on the other side of the tent from her?

 

 

“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. By staying in here,” he said, slowly moving to lay down on the furthest edge of the sleeping bag, as far as he could get from her. 

 

 

“I don’t mind sleeping with you,” Felicity said, and immediately winced. “And I mean sleeping as in actual sleeping next to you in the same bed. Or tent. Not anything sexual. Not that you aren’t attractive, and I’m sure that, you know,  _ sleeping _ with you would be just as nice as the actual sleeping part and I’m going to stop talking, right now.”  She let herself fall backwards and tried to burrow her way under the fabric in an attempt to hide before she had to see the look she was positive Oliver was giving her.

 

 

Why did she have to let nerves get the better of her out here and let forth a babble unlike anything that had been seen before?

 

 

“Good night, Felicity,” Oliver said, apparently taking pity on her. She didn’t answer, instead rolled up her now dry shirt to make a pseudo pillow and hunkered down further into her part of the blanket. 

 

 

The tent went dark around her when Oliver turned off their light. Instantly, she was aware of every little noise and movement around her, trying not to jump out of her skin every time it turned out to be a tree branch or a fern frond that was brushing against the outside canvas. 

 

 

“I hate the rainforest,” she mumbled, knowing she wasn’t going to get any sleep that night.

 

 

Somehow, within the course of the night, Felicity must have managed to not only unroll herself from her cocoon, but also bunched it up for a pillow. While still leaving enough for her to say she was sleeping under a blanket. Nighttime Yoga was a wonderful new skill and it was the only way she could think of for why she was both comfortably resting her head not on the ground, and still be covered.

 

 

She turned onto her side and tried to bury her head further into her pillow, wanting to sleep more. Or not move ever, given how sore her legs were from all of their walking yesterday. Instead of pillowy softness though, she was met with muscley hardness in the form of a body. 

 

 

Her eyes popped open upon realization that she had been using Oliver as a pillow, and that was why she felt so comfy. 

 

 

When she had been busy babbling last night, he must have stripped down to just his jeans, as she had a perfectly clear view of his chest and arms and abs. She felt his hand twitch against her back where he was holding her to him, and she couldn’t help but settle more fully into her Oliver Shoulder Pillow. 

 

 

“I should move,” she tried to convince herself quietly. “I should move before he wakes up and I make it awkward because I totally glommed onto him while he was asleep and that was not the plan at all.”

 

 

“I don’t mind.” His voice was still raspy with sleep. Felicity moved her head so she could look at his face. He looked so pretty in the muted morning light that it was really unfair. She was positive she probably had a rat’s nest for hair and morning breath that would kill since she hadn’t brushed her teeth or hair last night. 

 

 

“Waking up like this is a nice surprise.” He spread the hand on her back out, and she could feel the heat from his fingers through the thin cotton of the shirt she had borrowed from him. His pinky touched bare skin where the shirt had ridden up during the night and he began to rub the spot gently. She wasn’t sure he was even aware he was doing it, the way he was looking at her. 

 

 

She made a humming noise of agreement, enjoying the moment. Oliver lifted his head and leaned towards her at the same time she began to move towards him. She felt him cup her cheek with the hand that had been holding her. “Oliver,” she said softly, opening her lips slightly when he ran his thumb over them.

 

 

“Felicity,” he breathed out.

 

 

A loud squawking noise outside the tent made her jump. “What was that?” she asked, frozen. It sounded again a moment later, from a different spot and Oliver dropped his hand from her face and rubbed it over his face. 

 

 

“Sounds like a macaw,” he said after a moment. He grabbed the shirt he had tossed into the corner last night and tugged it on when he sat up, not looking at her. “They’re obnoxious out here, especially once a group of them get going.” 

 

 

Felicity heard the tent’s zipper behind her when Oliver pulled it down, and it sounded just as loud the second time when he tugged it back up. “I’ll um...I’ll let you get ready. Then we can break camp and start hiking again. It’s not too far away now, based on the maps and my notes.”

 

 

“Sounds good,” she responded, trying to sound normal. Like she hadn’t almost kissed him. Like he hadn’t pulled away the moment he realized what was actually happening.  

 

 

She shook her head and reached for her jeans before starting to search for her balled up top. Of course he had pulled away. He was Oliver Queen. He had probably thought that he was still dreaming or something and that she was some leggy damsel in distress he had just rescued ala Temple of Doom. The squawking birds had broken that spell faster than any fairy godmother would have, leaving him with just her: the woefully unprepared for the jungle librarian. 

 

 

Packing up the sleeping bag, she sighed. “Just because you think he’s pretty doesn’t mean he’s into you, Felicity,” she told herself. “He’s here for El Dorado. You just happened to be along for the ride.”

 

 

For now, she would focus on getting to the city, seeing the mystery through to the end, and enjoying the rush of adventure that came along with it all. With her plan in place, she left the tent, ready to start a hike she was positive would leave her half dead by the end of it.

 

 

Oliver’s original estimation of reaching where the city was supposed to be no later than mid day were sadly inaccurate. Felicity was sure that it was because he was basing his hiking time on how fast he could go, which was at a stupidly fast pace considering the terrain. He was bobbing up and down, avoiding trees and slicing through ground cover like he was personally offended by its existence. The view from behind might have been a good one, but the trail he was making was not making it any easier for her. 

 

 

Her stomach was beginning to clearly make its displeasure at not being fed known, and she wondered if Oliver would kill her if she asked for another rest stop to eat so soon after the last one she had asked for so that she could breathe. About to call ahead to him, she watched as he lowered his machete and took a few slow steps forward. 

 

 

Drawing reserves of energy from somewhere deep inside, she jogged towards him. She emerged out of the jungle to the rocky top of a cliff, trying to catch her breath. “What did you find?” she asked. Oh, she was so going to work on cardio when she got back to civilization. 

 

 

Oliver motioned with his head, drawing her attention forward to the edge of the cliff and what was beyond. 

 

 

It was overgrown, taken back by the jungle around them. But the fact that she was looking at orderly rows of buildings and half crumbled walls, partial roofs and remains of statues glinting in sunlight made it clear.

 

 

“It’s El Dorado,” she whispered. “It’s real.”

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to adiwriting and ohemgeitscoley for their beta work here! (Especially since Adiwriting did it after working a 12 hour day!) You ladies are rockstars!
> 
> No art in this chapter I'm afraid, but I hope everything that happens more than makes up for it!

While Felicity was ready to start climbing down the side of a cliff to get to the ruins of El Dorado — she still couldn't believe it was real! — Oliver’s suggestion of taking it slow and careful sounded like the better option once she actually stopped to think about it. Together, they were able to find what seemed to be the remains of a walkway down to the valley that had once housed the city. 

 

Once the actual descent down began, she was less useful than Oliver, who was going down first, making a human wall for her in case she slipped and started to slide down. 

 

Awfully considerate of him, considering they would be then sliding down the rocks and roots and dirt together and would probably both die at the bottom. But hey, if she was on top and ended up riding him down, she might survive. 

 

She stopped a second to catch her breath and silently thanked her lucky stars that she was breathing too hard to talk. Otherwise that thought would have come out as unintended innuendo, and things were already feeling strained between the two of them since this morning.

 

Skidding down a foot or two, Felicity found her footing again on a large flat rock that time and weather had exposed to the jungle. Oliver seemed not to be paying any attention to her, a far cry from the man who had been helping her over puddles and roots yesterday. She looked past him and saw that they were both almost down to the valley floor, and the gates into the city themselves.

 

Going slow wasn't really an option in her mind, not when she was so close to setting foot on ground no one had walked on for years. When there was level enough ground that she wasn't in danger of falling, she picked up her pace, quickly catching up to Oliver and almost passing him by in her anxiousness to reach the gates. 

 

“Felicity, wait,” he said, gripping her arm. “There are protections and traps in place according to de Ordaz.”

 

She spun around to look at him, to make sure that he wasn't joking about it and caught the serious look on his face that she hadn't seen since John Diggle had called him at the museum. 

 

“Of course there are traps,” she sighed. “I mean, I remember helping to translate and reading about them, but I forgot them until now.” Felicity looked down at where Oliver was still holding onto her arm, and watched as he seemed to realize what he was doing and quickly let go. 

 

He set down the equipment he was carrying and pulled his battered notebook from his back pocket. “There’s a pit of snakes ahead if we don’t take the right path into the city, and the gate itself is said to know who is there to steal from the inhabitants.” He glanced up at the walls in the distance, but Felicity wasn’t sure he was actually seeing anything that he was looking at. “I’m sure the walls used to be manned by guards too, but thankfully I doubt any of them have survived.”

 

Wasn’t that a wonderful thought, the idea of undead Incan guards patrolling ruins and killing anyone who was trespassing. Like her and Oliver. They would probably be unkillable themselves, seeing as how they were already dead. Felicity felt a chill go down her back that did nothing to cool down the temperature at the idea that she might suddenly be in a zombie movie now. There was a reason she didn’t watch The Walking Dead when everyone else was talking about how much they enjoyed it.

 

Adventure did not need crazy killing monsters to make it more adventure-y.

 

“The pits should be easy enough to see, I bet,” she said after a moment. “If they were covered before with branches and stuff, that's probably all fallen in by now.”  She motions to what looks like the start of a path maybe fifty feet away from them. “I vote that way?”

 

She watches as Oliver pages through his notebook once more, lips moving as he silently reads, before eventually nodding. “As good as any other. Nothing about how to choose a path. Or how to get through the gate once we get there.”

 

“We’re doing pretty well with making it up as we go along,” Felicity said quietly. For a moment, Oliver smiled at her, and it was like whatever weirdness that had happened between them this morning melted away. As suddenly as it came, the moment went, and Oliver seemed to turn into an emotionless robot again, picking up the gear before he started towards the path. 

 

She wasn't sure what had happened to make Oliver act like this, but Felicity really hoped it didn't happen again. She missed the Oliver who picked her apartment lock as a way to help. At least they were almost done — almost inside the city — and then it was over. 

 

Following after him, she narrowed her eyes in thought. The goal had been to find the city, which they had. As far as she knew, the adventure was done. So why was Oliver wanting to get inside? What was he looking for? Maybe it was the gold itself, a massive pile of it. As if the discovery of El Dorado wouldn't be enough to make him famous.

 

But he was a Queen. So he had to find a way to increase the family fortune, didn't he? Maybe that served her right for helping him, forgetting that he was still going to be robbing riches from a dead civilization. At least she could make notes about what she was seeing and let...whoever was in charge of important historical finds know when they got out of the jungle. 

 

It wasn’t hard to make their way to the gates into the city, even with the constant threat of pit traps hanging over their heads. She stepped carefully at first, ready to scramble backwards if anything shifted under her feet. Most of the old pits were clearly visible, thankfully. While they might have been covered with leaves or sticks to hide them once upon a time, it had all rotted away long ago. And, hey, if there had been anything living in them at any point--tiger pits were a thing, so why not jaguar pits--they were probably long dead too.  

 

They picked their way across the fallen stonework, the jungle vines making for slippery footholds and made some pathways look more solid than they actually were. Felicity found it out the hard way when her foot slid between two bricks and only Oliver’s quick reaction kept her from falling backwards and giving herself a concussion. 

 

Felicity was sure the only reason Oliver was making it a point to go in at the gates instead of just scaling the remains of the wall was because she was along. There was no way she was going to be free climbing over the crumbling bits that remained, not when it looked like one wrong step would bring the whole thing down on top of her. 

 

Or worse, on top of both of them. Then neither of them would be able to help the other to get out, and they would get crushed to death if the stones moved again or end up starving to death in the middle of the jungle. No one would even know where they were and her mom would wonder forever what had happened to her baby girl when she didn’t come home for Hanukkah.

 

Not dying in the middle of Venezuela sounded like the best possible of all available options, especially since she had already survived falling out of a place in order to get to it. She didn’t have her wallet or anything either, so if they did die, she would be the nameless Jane Doe and probably put into a museum or something for “first people to find the city”. Or maybe be like the signposts that the dead hikers became on Mount Everest. A sort of ‘turn left at the first body’ morbid GPS system.

 

Oliver coming to a sudden stop in front of her broke her out of her increasingly depressing thoughts, which was really for the best. There was a particularly large rift in the ground in the middle of their route, and while Felicity tried to figure out if there was a way to get across by maybe trying to manhandle one of the stones into a bridge, Oliver went off into the jungle with his machete again, leaving her alone in the rapidly encroaching darkness as the sun began to set.

 

“I think I hate him,” she decided when he didn’t immediately return. While she wasn’t feeling cold, exactly, she couldn’t help but wrap her arms around her torso for some degree of comfort. The rustling of leaves and jungle noises seemed so much closer and nerve wracking now that she was alone. It was the same feeling whenever she was late getting back to her apartment at night, riding the subway line alone, walking streets that would have been full of people only an hour before. 

 

She was going to start jumping at shadows soon, she knew it. 

 

“Oliver,” she called out. Felicity concentrated on keeping her voice pitched low, hoping it would carry. If there was something around her, she didn’t need it suddenly realizing that there was an interloper near. 

 

There was no answer, so she called out again, a bit louder. “Oliver? Are you there?”

 

Ahead of her, on the other side of the chasm, she saw movement. The undergrowth was moving at a rapid pace, and it looked like whatever was making it wave about was big. Eyes darting around, she tried to find a place she might use to hide, but couldn’t find anything that would be of any use. Not unless she wanted to dive into the jungle. Which was a huge nope there.

 

That left her with hoping that whatever was coming wouldn’t be able to leap to her. 

 

The gap was wide enough, she thought. 

 

It was like the moats at the zoo. Kept the people out and the animals in. Animals never got out from a zoo enclosure. 

 

Felicity would be fine.

 

“I’m not going to die in the jungle,” she told herself. “Not here, not now.” 

 

She reached down and picked up a chunk of the wall that was littering the ground and readied to throw it, just in case.

 

Time seemed to slow down right before a figure burst out of the jungle and into the slightly more open area on the other side of the gap. In the fading light, it took her a moment to realize what she was seeing.

 

“Dammit, Oliver! You scared me,” she yelled, trying to throw the rock in his direction. It made it about halfway across before falling harmlessly into the dark. It was a good thing, really, since she hadn’t actually been aiming to hit him with it. At least not after she realized that it was him and not a panther or a wild boar or...or Slade Wilson coming out of nowhere.

 

“Where did you go,” she asked him, meeting him on her side of the gap. 

 

“I was trying to find a way around this.” He nodded his head towards the expanse between them. “I was hoping it was just here, but it goes pretty far into the jungle there, and I turned back before I could find any sort of path across.”

 

“Then how did you get over there?”

 

Oliver gave a half shrug. “I jumped.”

 

“You're going to come back across now so we can look for the way in together,” she asked. If it came out a bit more like a demand than an actual question, Felicity wouldn't say. Talking loud was the best way for her voice to carry, that was all.

 

Oliver set the gear he was carrying back from the edge before motioning behind him. “I’m pretty sure the entrance is over there.” 

 

As in the opposite side of where she was currently standing. Maybe she could convince Oliver to hop back across, seeing as how he was the athletic one here, and they could see about backtracking and getting to the way in from the other side of the city. That would mean adding even more time to their day though, and she was already feeling tired and ready to go sleep in a tent with Oliver. 

 

Which was really saying something, given how much awkward had happened that morning when they had both woken up.

 

“How am I supposed to get over there? Jump?” she asked shortly. She could actually see as Oliver thought about her suggestion and she backed away. “No. I am not jumping over there. I will make it halfway and I will fall and you’ll be fishing out a skeleton in a year.”

 

“I’ll catch you, don’t worry. Toss the pack over first.” 

 

Why did he have to sound so optimistic about her actually managing to do this? Did he not remember how he had to carry her down the stairs back in the library when this whole thing had started? That had been on familiar ground, and she had still barely managed to keep up. 

 

“Oliver, I don’t think this is a good plan. At all.” Searching for a place to sit, she decided on the half destroyed pillar that was on its side behind her. “Tell you what, you go on ahead, I’ll sit here and wait for you to come back.”

 

Felicity wasn’t sure how it was possible for someone to roll their eyes involving their whole body, but somehow, he did it. She could feel his frustration from where she was, and as bad as she felt for being the cause, it wasn’t enough to overcome the fear of not making it across to Oliver. 

 

“Felicity,” he said. In the four clearly enunciated syllables, she heard everything from ‘you ran away from Slade Wilson, jumped out of a plane and got us this far’ to ‘this was your plan’ without him saying anything else. 

 

He did have an incredibly valid point, the more she thought about it.  They had come this far, and it would be the worst of luck to be stopped by her own fears, especially when she had faced them in the past. No, she could do this. All she had to do was pretend she had finally made it onto Legends of the Hidden Temple and channel her inner Blue Barracuda so she could leap to victory.

 

A lost city of gold would be a better prize than any dinky little RC Car Nickelodeon would have given her for running the hidden temple and being able to put the silver monkey together.

 

“Pack first,” she clarified. With Oliver’s nod, she got a good grip on the pack and went as close to the edge of the ground as she was comfortable. She tried not to think about the fact that there was nothing but air a few inches in front of her, and that if the ground gave way, she would be going down right along with it. 

 

“Probably not a good time to mention that I was forbidden from doing any sort of team sports ever because I have terrible hand-eye coordination?” 

 

He was either better at disguising frustration than she was, or wasn’t actually frustrated, because there wasn’t an ounce of it in his voice when he reassured her. “You can do this. It’s like tossing a water balloon.”

 

She bit her lip and hefted the pack to get a better feel of how it would toss. She did not need to tell him her water balloon toss games ended with her partner getting soaked before the third round. 

 

“Are you sure you can catch this,” she asked him. “I don't want to lose the tent or the supplies.”

 

“On three. I will catch it.”

 

If nothing else, she could believe in his conviction. “On three,” she agreed. Felicity got a good swing going and started her count. On three, she tossed it in a high arc, pushing it away from herself at the same time. Not wanting to see it land short of Oliver, she closed her eyes and waited for him to tell her that it hadn't made it. 

 

“Nice toss!”

 

“I did it?” She blinked open her eyes and saw Oliver with both packs on the ground next to him. “Oh my God. I did it!”

 

She couldn't keep her excitement out of her voice. Given how Oliver was looking at her, he didn't seem to mind too much, a small smile making his eyes twinkle. 

 

“If I can throw over it, I can jump it,” Felicity called to him. There was something to be said for that feeling of accomplishment, and the courage that it gave her. 

 

After judging the distance like she knew what she was doing, she took a few steps back from the edge. Another look, and the other side seemed a lot further away than it had a moment ago. She walked backwards a bit more, hopefully giving herself enough space for a good run up before her jump.

 

“If I die, I will haunt you for the rest of forever. So you know.”

 

“Duly noted,” he responded. It did nothing to reduce her nerves. 

 

“Deep breath, Smoak,” she told herself. She took her own advice, tried to focus on her breathing, and then gave a nod. She could do this. 

 

Before she could talk herself out of it, Felicity took off running like it was the final day of high school PE all over again. Feeling like a gazelle, but knowing she probably looked more like a pigeon, she flung herself over the crevice with a well timed push forward. 

 

Oliver caught her, wrapping his arms around her, keeping her from falling to the ground. 

 

“Oh my God, I did it,” she panted again.

 

He nodded, giving her that dorky smile he seemed to only ever show her. “You did it.”

 

Felicity smiled up at him before realizing that she was still in his arms, and how good it felt to be in them. She could see it in his eyes when he realized the same thing, and she dropped her arms before backing away.

 

“I'm not going to do it again,” she declared. She grabbed the pack Oliver had left on the ground. “Which way from here?” If Oliver was going to be determined to pretend like last night and this morning had never happened, then she had no problem doing the same.

 

“Not too far,” he said, walking towards the larger ruins of the wall in the distance. 

 

Compared to the struggles of before, the walk to the crumbled towers marking the entrance was easy. Whatever had caused most of the damage seemed to have been contained to the other side of the jumped rift. There were, of course, fallen stones and twisty roots that attempted to trip her up with every step, but on the whole, it was more like a hike than an obstacle course. 

 

Even weathered as they were, there were detailed carvings on what had likely once been an impressive arch for the city gates. If Oliver hadn't been pushing hard for them to get inside the walls and make camp, Felicity would have taken much more time with them. 

 

When she had asked why they were hurrying, he had looked over his shoulder at her, but didn't stop walking. 

 

Felicity understood the feeling of excitement of finally getting inside. She had it thrumming through her veins. But it didn't give Oliver a reason to revert back to being a jerk, like the person he had appeared to be back when they had first met. Happy he was facing the other way, she made a face at his leather-clad back while wondering, not for the first time, how he wasn't dying in the heat while wearing that brown jacket of his that he always had on.

 

One last, longing look at the carvings, she ducked into what was once a grand and imposing entrance. She imagined it to be fancy back in its prime, at least. Now it was dark and dreary, and Felicity wished she had a flashlight so she didn’t keep having to worry about twisting an ankle if she stepped wrong.

 

Maybe Oliver had one at the bottom of the bag of holding that he was lugging around. He seemed to have everything else in the backpack of his. Then she could spend the night in the wonderfully sheltered archway without having to worry about something sneaking up on them when she took her time to examine everything.

 

Plan in place, she picked up her pace and tried to catch up with Oliver. He was already out from the entryway, standing in place as he waited for her.

 

Stepping out from the entrance’s shadow, she was struck with how large the open space in front of them was. She had seen photos of Machu Picchu — who hadn’t — but they hadn’t prepared her for the enormousness of whatever the clearing was. Her first thought was that it might have been a courtyard of some sort, but she brushed that thought aside as quickly as it occurred. She was trying to imagine the city as an old European walled city, when this one would have existed far before any conquistadors might have left their mark.

 

A bit further away from them, terraces began to climb up towards the sky, looking like they were carved from the cliff surrounding the valley. Seeing how good some of the structures still looked, Felicity wished that she had a camera to capture any of what she was seeing. The thought that they might have been the first people in who knew how long to actually see this view boggled her mind. All because Oliver had somehow found a story about the path to El Dorado being carved into an arrow head and hadn’t dismissed it as nothing but a legend.

 

She turned in place, taking in the view. So much to look at, so many nooks and crannies she could explore. Suddenly the carvings in the archway didn’t seem nearly as important as they had. 

 

Felicity took a slow walk around the buildings that remained, trying to figure out what their purpose might have originally been. They were mainly one room sort of huts, easily made and repaired in case of damage. Most lacked a roof by now, which made her think they were originally covered with leaves or bark or other long since rotted away material.

 

Even with her slow and meandering path, she did eventually catch up to Oliver. He was standing in the shadow of one of the ruins, sketching out what looked like a rough map on one of his notebook’s pages. 

 

“I think you might get a better view from up there,” Felicity told him, pointing towards the highest ridge at the base of the cliff wall. “It might be easier to draw a map that way.”

 

She watched him tuck the notebook into his pocket before looking to see where she was pointing. “It looks like there is some sort of structure up there too. Built right up to the cliff,” he said.

 

Now that he had mentioned it, the pile she thought had just been the remains of a rock slide after a storm did have a rather planned look about them. 

 

“It will be the best place to make camp for the night too,” he continued. “Keep us out of this bowl here in case of sudden rain.” Oliver gave her a wry sort of smile. “I don’t know how close we are to the river, or if there’s any danger of flooding.”

 

“High ground sounds good, let’s go,” Felicity said, ready to start marching up the terraces as quickly as possible. The idea of being swept away in a raging river was all sorts of nope and suddenly she had her second, third, even fourth wind. However many winds she needed to get to the building and be safe.

 

She might have overestimated how many winds she was going to need on their way to the top though. By the second of the five terraces, she was slowing and would have given her DVDs of Farscape for a never ending glass of cold water.

 

“Either we take a break, or you're going to be carrying me the rest of the way,” she said to Oliver’s back. She bent at her waist, trying to catch her breath and breathe deep. It didn't feel like it was making a difference, but she had always seen runners doing it when she would watch the Olympics. It was working to let her gain some energy back in her arms and legs, so maybe she could start walking again sooner than later.

 

She heard his footsteps approach, then his feet appeared in her field of vision. “Here,” he said, a tap on her shoulder to make her lift her head.

 

She grabbed at the canteen and gulped at the water. It was warm, no where near fresh, and exactly what she needed. 

 

“Thanks,” she said, handing it back. 

 

Oliver nodded and strung the canteen around his back again. He kept pace with her as they resumed climbing, glancing over at her every now and again. 

 

“I'm surprised there isn't more gold laying around. I guess I always pictured a yellow brick road in my head whenever I thought about the city,” he said. 

 

“El Dorado meant the Golden Man originally,” Felicity shared. “I'm sure that some things got lost in translation or embellishment.” She caught Oliver’s eye and gave a shrug. “Haven't we all oversold something on occasion?”

 

“Even if it’s a man made of gold, that’s still going to be a lot,” he said. 

 

“I bet they would probably have kept a guy made of gold some place important.” Felicity paused for a moment at the top of the final terrace and turned to look behind her. She could see clouds in the distance, hear their low rumbles. The threat of another storm was nothing to seeing the valley lit up in the golden hues of the sun set. 

 

While Robert Frost might have thought nothing gold could stay, she knew her view from up here would stick with her for the rest of her life. It wasn’t hard to close her eyes and picture how El Dorado would have looked in its prime, streets laid out between buildings, plants blooming and being cultivated in the shadow of the cliffside. It was possible to see everything from the top terrace.

 

The building they were headed to was further up the slope, and she wondered if the view would be even better from its steps. 

 

“Oliver,” Felicity said slowly, “why would they build only one building on this level? It doesn’t make sense to haul all the stones and supplies up this far, and then only make one thing.”

 

“Unless the one thing was meant to hold a place of honor,” he said, finishing her thought. “You think the gold is in there.”

 

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think there is gold just lying about in there. But I do think that whatever might have been important to this city would have been kept in it. Maybe a temple? Or a palace.”

 

“If there is a treasure, I bet it’s up there,” he said with a nod. Oliver didn’t even pretend that he was going to keep pace with her then, taking off towards what Felicity was calling a temple in her head. 

 

“Don’t mind me,” she grumbled under her breath. “I’m just the entire reason you made it here. Not like I would have liked to see the golden man after I did all the translating and jumping out of a plane to get here.”

 

She understood his excitement level. She couldn’t blame him, since hers were up there too. It just would have been nice if he had waited for them to both go in together or something. The Incans could have trapped the place. If he just wandered in blindly and started poking at things, there was no telling what could happen to him, and then she would be without a way to get home. 

 

It might have been just a movie, but she had seen Temple of Doom, and knew the dangers of rolling boulders or spikes shooting up from the floor if you stepped wrong. 

 

If the Egyptians had built the pyramids with traps in them, like History Channel marathons had shown her, it made sense that the Incans would be able to do   
the same things to protect what was important to them.

 

Even though Oliver had gone inside before her, she was super careful as she slowly worked her way up the stairs into the Temple of Gold. The only danger ended up being some wobbly areas on the steps. It was a good thing, really, even if a part of her was disappointed in the lack of arrows flying out of nowhere.

 

Her dismay at lack of protections, and of passing by the art at the entrance earlier, was quickly forgotten when she stepped inside. 

 

The walls were beautifully decorated with painstakingly carved figures and painted colors. Walking the perimeter, Felicity followed the story of the sun coming down to earth, offering a gift of itself to the people who welcomed it. The sun led its people for many years before it returned to the sky and its lover. Before it left, it gave its light to the next leader. 

 

The final scene showed the second leader passing his power onto another, leaving him made of stone now that the sun was gone from him. 

 

Hesitantly, Felicity brushed her fingers over the figure. It was smooth under her touch, not at all like the rock she had expected. A golden man.

 

“Oliver,” she called, not taking her eyes off the carvings, “I think I found the gold.”

 

“A ritual?” he asked, stepping close behind her. “Make a statue from the old king so the wisdom isn’t lost?” 

 

“I don’t speak stonework, Oliver,” she retorted. She dropped her hand and turned to look up at him. “I’m not even sure how you could make a statue out of gold. It’s not exactly a hard metal.” Felicity brushed past him, ignoring the little flutters in her stomach. “It doesn’t look like there’s even a sign there was ever anything here,” she finished, looking around.

 

Aside from a slightly raised dais across from the way in, there wasn’t much in the way of anything inside of the temple. 

 

“If it was such an important thing someone spent all the time on that,” she gestured at the walls, “you would think there would be some sign of the old kings.”

 

She didn’t get a response from her adventuring buddy. A quick glance over her shoulder showed him looking through his notebook and she wondered what he was looking for. She gave herself a mental shake to try to get out of her funk. Felicity needed to focus on the fact they had found the lost city, and it wasn’t completely destroyed by time and jungle. It had never been about finding a whole bunch of gold. Not for her.

 

Even if it was a little bit disappointing that all the stories had turned out to be false. The only gold around here was on the walls. Somehow “Gold on the wall” got morphed into “walls made of gold” along the way of being talked about, leading to a let down that was even larger than Windows 7.

 

Her poor tablet never had been the same after that update. 

 

“Felicity,” Oliver said, coming to stand behind her. “I need you to look at something for me.”

 

“What is it?” 

 

“The markings on the edge of the altar,” Oliver said, “I think they are supposed to mean something.”  

 

She walked from the entrance and knelt down next to the dais, trying to get a better look. “Are you sure they aren’t just scratches?” she asked, brushing her fingers against them. “Or maybe weathering?” 

 

More than anything, it felt like Oliver was grasping at straws. Trying to find anything that wouldn’t mean it was a dead end on a treasure hunt. The gouges in the stone might be chisel marks, but that was it. 

 

“That’s what I thought at first,” Oliver admitted. “But…” he trailed off. Then he knelt close enough next to her that she was suddenly instantly and completely aware of just how close they were, and that they hadn’t been this close since the almost kiss that morning. 

 

She wasn’t counting him catching her on her leap. That wasn’t really by choice.

 

Him kneeling down right next to her was a choice and Felicity really, really wished he would stop sending her all sorts of mixed signals.

 

Taking the notebook he handed her, she glanced down at the pages. Spread across the two sides was a drawing of the arrow head, life-sized and so detailed that even the small web-like cracks were visible. 

 

“You’re a really good artist. It’s as good as having the actual one here with us,” she said, passing the notebook back to him.  Felicity found herself biting back a smile when Oliver refused to meet her eyes. Who knew that a simple compliment would be enough to make him turn into a sheepish boy?

 

“I think the markings are the same,” he said. Apparently he wasn’t going to acknowledge her compliment on his drawing skills. She had no idea how long he had taken to copy the arrow head though, so maybe it wasn’t as completely impressive as she originally thought.

 

And hey, maybe the next federal budget would grant twelve gazillion dollars to the Institute of Museum and Library Services next year.

 

Felicity quickly compared the first marking on the drawing to the altar, and noted that Oliver was right. They weren’t in the same order, but they were all there. She looked over the top of the altar and saw the same designs on the wall, each stone having its own symbol.

 

“Do you think those stones might move if we touch them?” she asked Oliver, pointing at them.  “Maybe they are some sort of locking mechanism on a door, and if we push the stones in order, we’ll get into Diagon Alley.”

 

“Hopefully the right order is the one on the arrow head,” he told her. “Just in case, stay back here.” He dropped the backpack to the ground next to her. “I have a satellite phone in there. If I get the order wrong and a pit opens up, call Diggle on it. He’ll know what to do.”

 

“A pit?” she repeated. How had she not thought of it being a possible trap? It had been on her mind before, how had she forgotten the possibility of traps? Or that there might be a trick to the right order.  What side of the arrow head was the one to start on?  Did the Incans read left to right? Maybe she was just projecting her own European History viewpoints onto the society and assumed they read left to right because that’s what everyone else did.

 

What if he died?!

 

“You’re not the only fan of Indiana Jones here, Felicity,” he said, flashing her a smirk that honestly would have probably done Doctor Jones proud if she hadn’t been immobilized by the thought that Oliver could die if he pushed the wrong stone at the wrong time.

 

She thought she could handle adventuring and exploring. She had scoffed at papers calling the Queens treasure hunters. It was so much more dangerous that she had thought and suddenly she found a new respect for Oliver if this was a normal everyday thing for him. Risking life to hopefully uncover a new mystery.

 

“Don’t die,” she squeaked out, just as Oliver reached for the first stone.

 

Nothing happened with the first push. Felicity didn’t even realize she was holding her breath until her chest started to burn and she quietly gasped. She had to force herself to breathe in and out as Oliver pushed at the other four symbols. There was a low rumbling noise from beneath the floors that was quickly followed by shaking of the walls around them. She spun in place, trying to figure out where it was coming from, and watched at cracks appeared the edges of the wall where the golden man was. Dust spilled into the air, blocking her view. She couldn’t see what was happening, but when it had settled enough for her to see through it, Felicity saw there was a gaping hole leading into a tunnel where the wall had been.

 

She stepped carefully, cautiously, over to the tunnel that appeared and tried to see if there was any hint of what lay down it. The air didn't smell stale, so somehow it was circulating. The light from the central room only illuminated a few feet ahead, slowly giving way to an inky darkness. 

 

It was the sort of dark she always expected night to be, but had never seen growing up in Vegas or living in the city. 

 

“Here,” Oliver said, handing her a flashlight. “Point yours at the ground, and I'll keep mine pointed up. We should have better coverage that way.”

 

Felicity turned the crank on the flashlight a few times before flipping the switch. It might not be the best light, but it made the dark tunnel far less terrifying. She could see the floor at least. Important so she didn't trip over her own feet or over a step. 

 

It would be her luck, really, if sudden unexpected stairs happened. She fell up stairs far more often than the laws of gravity should allow for. Eventually a tumble down them had to come.

 

The darkness seemed to be swirling in front of her, and Felicity swore she saw Slade Wilson striding towards them before she realized it was nothing but shadows and her eyes playing tricks. She remembered, as a child, she had arranged her bed perfectly so that she could never look down the hallway while she was in bed. There had been too many times she had seen the terrifying figure of Darth Vader striding towards her room in the night.

 

Only the fact there was no sign of anyone being here before them was what kept her from thinking it actually was Slade. 

 

She felt Oliver gently place a hand on her shoulder, coming up from behind her. “I'm not asking you to follow me into there,” he told her.  “You're welcome to wait for me here. I can scout ahead, let you know what's there. Then we can get gear together tomorrow morning and go in.” 

 

Felicity took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She could do this. She jumped out of an airplane after all. 

 

“No, I’ve come this far. I’m seeing it through.” She looked over at him and gave a nod. “We can do this.”

 

Oliver didn’t look away from her, and she found herself unable to break the whole staring into one another’s eyes thing that was happening. She tilted her head to the side, ready to ask what he was looking for but he seemed to break out of whatever trance he had been in and nodded at her.

 

She wasn’t sure what he was trying to say with the manly nodding thing, but she started forward into the tunnel anyway. Hearing Oliver behind her gave her a feeling of safety. She knew that nothing would creep up on them from that way. His flashlight was pointed over her shoulder, and the height difference between them meant she didn’t block any of it.

 

Following Oliver’s suggestion, she kept her flashlight pointed at the ground, sweeping it back and forth. The tunnel floor had started smooth, stone tiles making it easy to walk. As the walls started to turn less carved or sculpted and more into natural rock, the more rugged the ground got. Even Oliver stumbled over a small hole a time or two, catching himself on the wall before he totally fell.

 

The only thing that was good about the uneven ground was that Felicity was positive there would be no hidden pressure plates waiting to skewer an unsuspecting person with a sudden spear from the ground.  

 

With just the two of them, only flashlights for light and the entrance far behind them at this point, the darkness was starting to feel like it was pressing in towards her. She could feel the temperature around them dropping, and while her clothes had felt overly hot earlier in the day, she was ready to ask Oliver if she could steal his jacket from him, so she didn’t start shivering. 

 

She swept the light from her flashlight ahead of them again, doing a double take when she saw something reflect it back at her. Keeping it steady, she asked “Do you see that too? Or am I just seeing things because I want to?”

 

Oliver shook his head. “I see it too. Be careful, we don’t know what’s up there.”

 

It wasn’t as though she had planned to race ahead with no regard of what she might have found. She didn’t know why Oliver had felt a need to tell her to be careful. She fought down the part of her that now suddenly did want to rush forward out of spite, and managed to keep it at a fast sort of power walk. 

 

The ceiling of the tunnel suddenly gave way to open space, and she found herself in a large sort of cavern.  She turned in a slow circle, trying to make out any of the details of the room, but her one small light barely did anything to illuminate the place.

 

“Do you have any more flashlights?” she asked Oliver, even as she pointed hers up. She couldn’t even see anything that resembled a ceiling. “Or maybe a flood light?” 

 

Oliver’s light was suddenly moved back to his feet and she quickly brought hers back down to focus on the ground around her. She did not let out any noise at the sudden onset of darkness. There would be no admitting to anyone she had jumped a bit in her shoes and let out a quiet squeak. She hadn’t realized how much more light the two flashlights gave and missed the reassurance that nothing was going to come creeping out from the darkness around them without her seeing it first.

 

“I don’t,” Oliver said, “but I might have found something better. Can you shine your light over here a sec?”

 

Given that she hadn’t moved more than three feet away from him, and had already been on her way back once he had put his light down, Felicity found herself staring at a kneeling Oliver in the spotlight.  

 

He was next to a large trough that she hadn’t noticed on her way in, and there seemed to be more that joined up with it the closer she looked. It ended right outside of the tunnel they had come in with, marking what she assumed was probably a pathway to follow into the cavern. Oliver dipped his fingers into the trough before rubbing them together. 

 

“It’s oil,” he told her before reaching into the pocket of his jacket.

 

The flashlight glinted off the metal of his lighter. As she watched the sparks form, then fade into the dark, she noted it was a lot like the glinting she had seen from the tunnel. Only Oliver’s lighter was a bit more shiny than whatever had been reflecting back at them before.

 

It took him a few tries to get the lighter to work. Once he had the flame going, he brought it down into the trough. The flame leapt from his hands and into the grooves cut into the floor, quickly spreading through the network of channels that must have been painstakingly carved and maintained. 

 

It cast a warm glow throughout the cavern. Felicity’s eyes adjusted quicker than she thought they would, given how low the light was, but it didn’t take long until she no longer needed her flashlight. Oliver helped her to her feet, and the two stood up, taking it all in. 

 

The source of the dull glinting from before suddenly became clear as she saw a number of figures stationed around the outside of the room. The orange and red glow from the flames was reflected back at them, richer than she had seen before. She took a few, slow steps towards the closest statue, wanting to confirm what she already suspected to be true.

 

Reaching up, she carefully rested her fingertips on the statue’s face. It warmed quickly under her touch. A part of her was surprised at how cool the metal was. She had seen amazing details in marble and granite before, and had known it was possible to make sculptures that looked ready to come to life.

 

She hadn’t known the same effects could be achieved with gold.

 

With the fire crackling, and the shadows dancing, the statue looked so lifelike. It wouldn’t have surprised her if it blinked and began talking.

 

Okay, so it probably would have surprised her a lot, actually. So it was a good thing that it didn’t, since she had met her quota of sudden heart rate increases for the day. The care and craftsmanship was clear though.

 

She glanced over her shoulder, quick footsteps drawing her attention away from the statue for a moment. On the other side of the room from her, she saw Oliver studying a statue of his own. 

 

Between them, in the center of the cavern, was a stone block about the same size as the altar that was in the temple. Only instead of being flat and free of debris, this one looked like there was something hidden under the remains of cloth on top. 

 

Felicity made a mental note to look at the altar with Oliver later. Maybe have him draw it in his notebook next to the sketch she saw him making of the statue now. She wondered if the same writing on the arrowhead would also be present on the altar in here.

 

As much as she wanted to investigate whatever it was under the cloth, she wasn’t ready to move away from the golden figure. For once, being the kid who could spend hours looking at the same museum display wasn’t a bad thing. It was easy to lose track of her surroundings with the knowledge that Oliver was there with her, and lose herself in the details in front of her. 

 

She couldn’t tell if the subject had been a warrior or a leader or important in some spiritual way. However, given the details in his clothing, and the amount of effort that must have gone into making the metal look like it was actual fabric at one point, they must have been important.

 

The closest she had ever seen to anything like this before were the death masks from the Fayum mummies. Even those had been created with paint though. The sculpted and carefully carved gold was something entirely new.

 

She wracked her brain, trying to figure out how the statues might have been made. Felicity knew she wasn’t an expert on geology or history or chemistry or any other -ology that might be useful when it came to ancient cultures. She was, however, pretty sure that gold was too soft of a metal to do any actual carving with. It was why gold was so often mixed with “lesser” metals, or just plated onto something. 

 

Unless a river made of gold was once actually winding its way through the city, there was no way to melt this much gold to make one statue out of a mold. That wasn’t even bringing the other nine others in the cavern into the equation.

 

The memory of the carving back up in the temple niggled at her brain, like an itch she couldn’t quite reach. 

 

Something about the story of the sun giving a gift, turning to gold and then disappearing wouldn’t leave her alone. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and tried to recreate the story in her head. 

 

It wasn’t until the gold orb had been passed to the next leader that the old one became made out of gold on the wall. The sun’s light had left him, turning him into stone. 

 

Felicity opened her eyes and looked up at the face of the statue again. There was no way that detail could have been gotten from a mold, and she didn’t think that the statues were just rock with gold leaf over them to make them look pretty. 

 

The idea of turning to gold not being an allegory seemed crazy to her. Then again, she had jumped out of a plane and ran from a madman with a gun since the beginning of all this. She had found a map hidden in knotwork and had jumped across a rift that she didn’t think was even jumpable. 

 

Maybe crazy was becoming the new normal for her. 

 

“I think we found the actual golden men,” she said, hearing footsteps behind her. “Oliver, this is the gold that every story keeps talking about!”

 

She turned around, a smile on her face. She was met with the sound of a mechanical click and found herself staring down the barrel of a gun. 

 

“And I appreciate you finding it so much, Miss Smoak,” Slade Wilson said.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at the almost end of this tale. Thank you to those of you who have read along the way, or to those who have stumbled upon this once it's done.
> 
> Thank you to adiwriting, my ever wonderful beta and A+ cheerleading work. Another thank you to ohemgeeitscoley for her beta work, and yelling at me when I did something exceptionally mean with my writing. You ladies both know how to make a writer feel appreciated.
> 
> I had so many cheerleaders during this that I'm sure if I tried to list them, I would forget someone. Know that I appreciate and love every one of you, and I could not have completed this journey I started almost two years ago without you.

With complete honesty, Felicity couldn’t say she had seen the day ending with Slade holding a gun to her head. The only way it could have felt any more intense was if he had been holding a sword at her throat instead.

 

That was really just a ridiculous thought though. Why on Earth would a revenge-minded, one-eyed man track them to a lost city and into a cavern where people were turned into gold carry a sword with him? It made far more sense to use a gun, given that everything else had made so much sense so far.

 

She tamped down on the nervous laugh she felt bubbling up inside and wanting out. Instead, she focused on the situation, on where Oliver was in relation to her, and basically everything else but the feel of a muzzle brushing through her hair.

 

Oliver’s shout of her name echoed for a few seconds, the reverberation hiding the sound of him running towards her. He skidded to a stop a half dozen feet from her when Slade moved the gun from her head to point at him. The arm around her neck tightened a bit as he aimed, and she struggled helplessly in attempt to break free.

 

All he did was tighten his arm further around her and Felicity became very much aware that, yes, it was possible to be crushed by someone’s bicep.

 

So many new things she was learning today, none of which she had ever really wanted to know.

 

“I’ve got to say, kid, I didn’t think you would get so far once you ran out with the arrow head,” Slade said calmly. He seemed to be the only person who wasn’t about to panic. Having total control over the situation did seem to help with any anxiety issues though. Since he was also the only one with a gun, and he had a hostage, no wonder he was perfectly calm and had the sense of control.

 

When Slade’s arm tightened around her neck in warning again, she made a conscious effort to take a deep breath. Then she made her herself stop trying to break his hold on her.

 

His chest brushed up against her back every so often. It let her feel how solid and hard it was. It didn’t have that warm, safe feel that Oliver’s chest had given her. Slade’s chest wasn’t warm at all, and didn’t even feel like he was actually a human. Body armor of some sort, maybe. It would explain why she couldn’t feel him breathing, or why her attempt to jab an elbow into his side hadn’t even warranted a grunt.

 

“Slade,” Oliver said carefully. “Let Felicity go. This is between you and me. It doesn’t need to involve her.”

 

As nice as it was that Oliver was trying to be the better person, it was harder than she thought it would be to not roll her eyes. Slade hadn’t involved her any more than Oliver had. She was the one who decided to involve herself. If Oliver thought she was going to let himself be killed or wounded just to prove a point… well, she would probably yell and kick at his shin since she couldn’t do much else.

 

“Let me go!” Felicity demanded. She couldn’t see all of Slade’s reaction, but she was able to manage a quick glimpse before he tugged her back to where she had been. There was no way that the sly smile she saw on his face meant anything good. Not for her and Oliver.

 

“What I do with you, Miss Smoak, depends entirely on Oliver Queen.” Slade’s voice was low in her ear. A small shiver ran through her body, and she couldn’t hide it. Oliver didn’t react to Slade’s threat at all, which was unlike him. Her captor must have kept his words quiet enough that only she had heard them.  

 

Instead of worrying about what Slade meant, Felicity raised her head and met Oliver’s eyes without flinching. Trying her hardest to tell him that she was okay -- and she was, even if she was terrified -- and that he didn’t need to worry, she was relieved when he finally gave a slow nod.

 

At some point, Slade would have to relax his guard long enough for her to slip free. There was no way for this strange standoff to last forever.

 

“Oliver Queen,” Slade said again. “You took something of mine the last time we met. I had planned on taking something of yours the next time I saw you.”

 

Felicity felt the arm around her neck move away. Before she could attempt a duck and run that would have made Chuck Bartowski proud, the crazy guy with the gun grabbed a handful of her hair. He tugged her back and to the side, pulled out some of her hair in the process.

 

Between the heat, humidity, no hairbrush, and now this, Felicity was so glad there wasn’t a mirror around at all. It wasn’t that she was vain, but she did take pride in how she looked. Right now, her hair probably looked like a rat’s nest.

 

Maybe even the nest of a ROUS.

 

Her worrying about her hair had the bonus effect of taking her attention away from the fact that she could feel the gun against her temple -- HE WAS HOLDING A GUN TO HER HEAD -- for all of thirty seconds.

 

What was the use of her big brain if she couldn’t even keep herself occupied during impending death?

 

“Never let if be said that I am not a considerate man,” Slade continued.

 

Felicity let out a quiet scoff.

 

Oliver gave her a smile.

 

Slade yanked at her hair.

 

She considered it a win.

 

“I am a considerate man,” Slade began again. “I know how much this discovery means to you, Oliver. I am willing to give you full credit, and I will walk away. The helicopter is outside and I will leave and never come back. But I will be taking your Felicity with me as I leave.”

 

Felicity could hear the smile in his voice as he finished talking. Smile, maybe, wasn’t the best word for what she thought she would see if she turned to look at him. Smirk? Could humans snarl? If anyone could snarl, it would probably be Slade Wilson.

 

He sounded like a shark about to eat its prey after a long hunt.

 

Watching Oliver’s face go all cold and emotionless, Felicity felt a growing sense of dread taking up residence in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t recall ever seeing him close off so completely before. Even if he wasn’t fond of sharing what he was thinking, she could always count on his eyes to at least let her know what sort of mood he was in.

 

He was like the Beast that way. Except he wasn’t under a spell and she wasn’t Belle.

 

“And what if I don’t walk away,” Oliver asked. There was a chill in his carefully, and precisely spoken words, like he was just barely not shouting.

 

“Then you and Miss Smoak both die.” The matter of fact way that Slade talked about killing them made her feel like she had been doused with ice water. He said it so calmly, like he was discussing the weather forecast, or how the Nationals had won the night before.  She felt her skin prickle up with goosebumps, even with the fact that the cavern was nice and warm thanks to the fires.

 

“There is, of course, another option. As I said, I’m considerate. You didn’t give me a choice in what I lost. I, however, am.” He waved his free arm to encompass the cavern. “You could always forget about El Dorado. Forget you were ever here, and walk out with Felicity. You have my word neither of you would be bothered again.”  He gave a slow, unamused laugh. “Of course, that would mean that you would never have anyone know about how you located such a marvelous, historical find.”

 

Felicity breathed quickly, eyes darting around as she tried to work on an escape plan. Slade was still talking, but he lowered the gun and held it loosely at his side. She might have a chance if she were to make a break for it.

 

His next words cut her plan off at its knees.

 

“But what is in a name, really. You are, after all, just Robert and Moira’s son. Why should your name have any meaning of its own?”

 

Those words were cold, and designed to cut right into Oliver’s heart as exact as a scalpel. She knew how much being Oliver Queen meant to him, instead of Robert’s son Oliver. Her heart dropped in her chest as she watched Oliver clench his fists before looking away from her.

 

The feeling of dread turned into an actual weight in her stomach when Oliver walked forward but refused to meet her eyes. After a moment, when he started looking everywhere but at her, she knew she couldn’t take it anymore. Trying to look down at her feet, Felicity didn’t feel anything but numb when Slade moved his hand out of her hair and onto her shoulder.

 

It might have been easy to escape from there, but what would be the point? Oliver would walk out without her, get the credit and the honor he always wanted, and she would be left to the whims of a failed James Bond villain.

 

The worst part was that she couldn’t even blame Oliver for his decision. It would be like if she was working on a code for half a decade, and then told that if she ever published it, she would be jobless and homeless forever. But if she let someone else take the credit for her work, she would have everything she had ever dreamed of.

 

It wasn’t even really a choice. Without that first break, it would be impossible to keep trying. Especially when everything had gone into that first attempt. Like Oliver had poured his all into finding El Dorado.

 

No, even with as scared as she was feeling, she couldn't find it in her to be upset at Oliver.

 

Felicity was not about to give up and be a damsel in distress. She refused to cry or cower. Swallowing down her panic, she gave Oliver a smile as he reached for her hand. It was a watery smile, but she wasn't going to mention it if he didn’t.

 

Before she could touch Oliver, Slade jerked them backwards. She yelped at the sting where his hand was still fisted in her hair.

 

“Stay back, Queen.”

 

“Slade, take me instead,” Oliver repeated.

 

Felicity watched in a fascinated horror as Slade trained his gun on Oliver. She could see him thumb back the hammer, the metallic click echoing in the cavern.

 

“That was not one of the options,” Slade said, voice in a low growl.

 

Oliver froze and slowly raised his hands. “Your word you won't hurt her?”

 

“I won't harm a hair on her head.”

 

The way he phrased it, so specifically saying that he wouldn't hurt her, was not reassuring. Felicity knew he was planning something, she just didn't know what. The feeling of unease grew when Slade began to walk backwards towards the altar with her.

 

She could see all the gold statues around the room, the flickering of flames making them seem like they were alive. If only one of them actually could come to life and rescue them. With the dais at her back, and the tunnel out in front of her, all she and Oliver would need to do was run.

 

All Oliver needed to do was turn around and walk down the tunnel to escape right now. So why wasn't he moving? He had made sure she was going to be safe as he left her there, at least from this specific mad man. Chivalrous duty complete.

 

Unless he wasn't leaving her. Unless he was waiting for Slade to let her go so they could both walk out together. That would mean that he had chosen her though. He would have chosen her over the fame and fortune he had originally been after.

 

“You said you would let her go!” Oliver yelled out. “I made my choice!”

 

Holy crap.

 

He had chosen her.

 

Slade ignored the shout and rotated slightly so Felicity could see the dais. The gold orb on the altar looked almost like liquid where it poked through time-ravaged wrappings.  

 

The hand in her hair tightened to the point she felt tears forming before she was shoved at the dais.

 

“Get the orb, Miss Smoak,” Slade demanded of her.

 

She didn't need to even look at him to know he was probably focusing only on Oliver. He sounded way too dismissive, ordering her about. It rankled, really, that he thought so little of her and didn't see her as a threat.

 

It was a good thing for her, sure, but Felicity was all for equality and feminism. She could be just as dangerous as Oliver if she put her mind to it.

 

It wouldn't be in the same physical way he was. Give her wifi and a computer, and she would find a way to wreak havoc.

 

Rising to her feet, she squared her shoulders and held tight to the knowledge that she could be a badass bitch if the situation called for it.

 

She jumped at a sudden bang. It was a firework that went off far too close to the ground.  When the echo faded from the cavern, Felicity could still hear her ears ringing. Her ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton, and she barely heard her own gasp.

 

Oliver was on his knees, clutching his hands around his thigh. Even from halfway across the room, she could see that his jeans were a lot darker there than anywhere else. The dark spot kept growing the longer she watched.

 

“Dammit!” Oliver cursed, attempting to get up and failing.

 

She felt her lungs burning and realized she hadn’t been breathing since Slade’s gun went off. Since Slade had shot Oliver.

 

Oh god, Oliver had been shot. By Slade.

 

Slade, still loosely holding his gun, who turned to look back at her.  He raised an eyebrow before circling the barrel of his gun towards Oliver.

 

“The orb, Miss Smoak. I am not a patient man. The next shot will go through his head,” he told her calmly. “From this distance, I assure you, I will not miss.”

 

Felicity felt like her legs were made out of rubber, and she expected them to give out from under her at any second. Her breathing was still shaky and uneven as she walked towards the orb on the altar. She couldn’t get a full breath in, and she wondered if she was having an asthma attack. Spontaneously developing asthma was something that could happen.

 

The logical part of her brain that wasn’t currently screaming in terror helpfully pointed out that she was probably in shock. Perhaps even having a panic attack. Physically, she was fine. It was a good thing, since Oliver very much was not fine.

 

Slade might have promised to not hurt her, but he hadn’t said anything about Oliver. It was probably why he had looked so pleased with himself before.

 

Felicity took a moment at the altar to make sure there were no clearly visible traps or pressure plates that might bring the whole place crashing down on her the moment she picked up the orb. She could see all of the golden statues around her, with room for more.  The altar had the same painstakingly carved figures from the walls in the temple, only the orb was at the center of them all, rays coming out from where it rested in the stone.

 

The orb was the gift from the sun.

 

With a steadiness she didn’t feel anywhere else in her body, she carefully gathered the torn shreds of fabric until she could lift the orb from its place without touching it. Felicity cradled it gently in her hands and walked steadily away from the altar and off the dais.

 

She stopped a bit away from Slade before finally looking up at him.

 

“Bring it here,” he ordered.

 

The distance between them wasn’t too far. Not really. It was, at most, the toss of a water balloon away.

 

She chanced a quick look at Oliver, and saw that he was staring at her, worry and fear in his eyes. Felicity smiled briefly, remembering his words from before. With concentration she normally reserved for research or writing code, she focused completely and totally on Slade.

 

“Catch,” she called out to him. She sent the orb flying in a low arc. It was a rather impressive underhanded toss, if she said so herself. The tattered fabric around it came unwrapped as it flew, making it look like a meteor streaking across the sky.

 

Her aim hadn’t been as good as she had hoped. Instead of flying right towards Slade, it veered to his left a bit. Time seemed to slow down for a moment as he realized what was happening before he threw his gun to the side and moved to intercept her throw before it could land in the flames.

 

“No! I won’t lose this!” he shouted out, lunging hard.

 

The moment he was out of the way, Felicity raced to where Oliver was, sliding the last few feet to him on her knees.

 

“Are you okay? Of course you’re not okay, you’ve been shot. But are you going to be okay? It didn’t hit anything major? I’m not a medical person but I think there’s only one big vein in the leg?”  She was babbling, and she knew it. Felicity grabbed at the lower hem of her shirt and jerked at it, trying to rip it. No matter how hard she tugged, she couldn’t get the fabric to tear. “This always looks so much easier when it’s on TV!”

 

“Get his gun,” Oliver said, putting one of his hands on her knee. She refused to look down at it, not needing to see the blood that she knew was probably all over it and now getting on her jeans.

 

Oh, a three hour long shower to scrub off everything sounded like heaven right now.

 

“Don’t need to,” she said absently. Giving up on her own shirt, she reached out towards his and tugged at the fabric. “Can you rip this? I need to make a bandage or a tourniquet or something so you don’t bleed out on me.”

 

“What do you mean you don’t need to get his gun?” he asked her, completely ignoring her plea for help in ripping his shirt. “Felicity, look at me!”

 

His hand covered hers on his chest and she looked up sharply at him.

 

Carefully, gently, he closed both of his hands around her one and gave it a squeeze. “Talk to me, Felicity. What do you mean, you don’t need to get his gun? I can’t grab it from here and you’re going to need it to keep him away from you.”

 

“Oliver, I--” She was cut off by Slade’s loud howl of triumph and she flinched at the noise.

 

Felicity looked over her shoulder and saw him holding it tight as he rose from the ground.

 

“You should have grabbed my pistol when you had the chance,” he said. He stepped slowly towards them, measured footfalls that matched the erratic beating of her heart. “Now I--no, what’s happening?” Slade looked down at the orb in his hand and for the first time, Felicity saw fear cross his face as his hand started to reflect the same warm, golden glow as the rest of the statues.

 

Slade looked up and met her eyes, more anger than a wet cat in a bathtub etched in every line of his face. “You! What did you do?”  

 

The golden glow was spreading faster, surrounding Slade at an impossible rate of speed.

 

His angry growl was suddenly cut off when it reached his head. In the sudden silence, broken only by their breathing, Oliver and Felicity watched as the glow faded, leaving a statue behind in its wake. The orb was still clutched in his outstretched hand, shining innocently in the firelight.

 

“The golden man,” Felicity explained after a moment. She looked back to Oliver and wrapped her own hand around his. “The chiefs were transformed to gold instead of entombed. That way they could keep watch over everyone, like the sun did.”

 

She looked down at their entwined fingers before quickly pulling her hands away with a blush she could feel, but desperately hoped was hidden in the low light.

 

“Where’s the huge machete you were carrying around before?” she asked him. “I think I need it to cut your shirt into bandages.”

 

“No machete,” he said. “But if you help me up, I think we can make it back to our bags. There’s a first aid kit in there.”

 

Oliver was an incredibly heavy person, as it turned out. Even with him holding more than half his weight on his one good leg as he limped down the tunnel. The passage seemed even longer on the way back. The only good thing was that they didn’t need flashlights on their way back, since Slade had apparently dropped chemical glow lights every few feet on his way in.

 

Walking the tunnel back in the dark really didn’t sound like a good time, given how her arms were busy holding Oliver up, and his were trying to keep himself steady against the wall. There was no way one of them could have held a flashlight.

 

“Why did you choose...not choose to walk out?” Felicity asked him. Since he was basically at her mercy and couldn't evade her questions, it was a great time to ask things she felt a pressing need to know. She wanted to ask why he had chosen her, but she couldn’t manage to get the words out. She still wasn't even sure that he had chosen. All she knew was that Oliver hadn't left when he had been given the chance.

 

Did that count as choosing her?

 

It was more like he had NOT chosen something. Like deciding that she didn't want the apple pie, so that left only the cherry. Was she Oliver's cherry pie?

 

Next to her, Oliver stopped walking, and Felicity stopped too. Thinking he probably wanted to rest a moment, she pulled back and leaned against the wall of the tunnel.

 

She looked up and saw him staring at her. He was looking at her the same way she always looked up in wonder at the night sky.

 

“Felicity,” he said softly. The whisper of her name seemed so loud in the tunnel it was like Slade’s gun had gone off all over again.

 

“Oliver?”

 

He smiled, the side of his mouth quirking up slightly. “Felicity,” he repeated. “He had you and was going to hurt you. There was no choice to make.”

 

He didn't think he had a choice. Did that mean…

 

Blankly, Felicity grabbed his outstretched hand and helped him back to his feet.

 

Outside of the temple, Oliver wrapped a bandage around his leg while she held a flashlight steady. The dull metal of the helicopter at the bottom of the terraces reflected the light back enough at them to see it was really there.

 

“As much as it hurts to do it, we need to destroy the carvings that opened up the way to the tunnel,” Felicity said, handing him another piece of gauze. “I don’t think that anyone needs to know about that.”

 

“No, I agree,” he told her. He taped down the edge of the bandage before leaning back on his hands. “It would be better if that treasure never saw the light of day.” Oliver stared at her, and it took her a moment to realize he was probably looking for any major injuries on her.

 

“I’m okay,” she reassured him. Felicity flipped the flashlight off before settling next to him in the grass. Even with the light of the full moon, she could see more stars in the sky than she had ever remembered there being. She focused on his face, the way he was looking at her, before gently patting his back. “I am sorry you lost your treasure though.”

 

He shook his head and took her face in his hands. “Pretty sure I’m not losing any treasure,” he said.

 

“Oh,” she exhaled on a soft breath. Felicity leaned forward, and kissed Oliver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have the epilogue done and complete. Expect that tomorrow.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know you're all waiting to see what happened after that kiss. So without further ado, have 1000 words of fluff to round this adventure off with.

Maybe it was because she had built it up in her head, but Felicity had expected a bit more when she walked through her apartment door. Something to put out on a shelf that she could point at when people asked her if she ever did anything besides work and read and occasionally play tourist in her city.

 

“Well, I did help find El Dorado,” she would proudly tell her imaginary visitor before serving tea from the fancy tea set she also suddenly inexplicably had.

 

Instead, she had a set of clothes to throw in the trash and a pressing need for a new pair of shoes.

 

It felt nearly impossible to concentrate on anything at work on Monday. Every time she stopped moving, Felicity felt her mind wander off and found herself thinking of what was happening in El Dorado right then. Was the government aware of it? Had Oliver told anyone about his find? She wondered if it counted as her find too, since she had been with him when they had finally reached it. Plus she was the one helping him to decode everything.

 

Those thoughts, of course, made her circle around Oliver, and the kiss she had given him before he had basically passed out on her. She remembered the look of total surprise and shock on his face, how he had tried to say something, but only managed her name. Then the big dummy apparently had the adrenaline wear off or the pain pills she made him take took effect and he leaned back and went to sleep. Meanwhile, she was left to wonder how she managed to surprise her kissing ninja.

 

She hadn't seen Oliver since he had been rushed into the hospital after he landed a helicopter on the roof. She hadn't heard from him since he called her from his hospital room to say there was an airline ticket back to NYC with her name on it.

 

What he hadn't mentioned was that the ticket came attached to a private jet. Her trip back into the States was far more comfortable than her flight out.

 

She had held onto the hope that maybe he would call her when he arrived back in the country. Two weeks after she was back, she still hadn't heard from him. Not even a postcard with a note saying he was back safe or anything.

 

As much as she didn't want to keep dwelling on it all-- on him, it was hard to not. Unlike the last time Felicity had been trying to force Oliver out of her mind, she found that she didn't actually want him gone. She was the one who had sprung the kiss on him.

 

Shoe on the other foot and all. It certainly wasn't fun not knowing where she stood with him.

 

With a sigh, she looked back down at her tablet. It was normally a great distraction for her during lunch. Bu today… The news feed she had been scrolling sort of blankly through was still on her screen, a strange combination of world news and new technology articles.

 

The article from Starling City Enquirer that prompted her drifting off into thoughts about gold and ancient ruins and Oliver was still front and center.

 

The headline, “El Dorado: Finally Found”, was all Felicity could see thanks to her settings. She was so very, very tempted to open the article, but didn't want the let down she knew she would feel if it actually ended up not being a real news story. The Enquirer wasn't exactly a reputable source of information, though thankfully the days of “super speed super heroes” being reported were over.

 

“You know,” said a familiar voice from behind her, “you can't go around kissing people like that.”

 

Felicity froze. Hope started to unfurl itself in her chest as she stood up and slowly turned around.

 

Dressed in jeans and his leather jacket, Oliver leaned against Patience, a smile on his face.

 

“What...what do you mean?” she asked once she found her voice. Why he was here now, standing in front of her, she wasn't sure. Maybe she had fallen asleep and was dreaming. After two weeks of no contact, she honestly hadn't expected to hear from him at all.

 

Seeing him actually in front of her, Felicity found herself torn between wanting to rush up and hug him, and wanting to rush up and slap him.

 

Oliver pulled his hands from his pockets and walked towards where she was still feeling rooted to the ground. “Kissing me the way you did when we were in El Dorado. You can't go around kissing random people like that.”

 

She felt his hands settle on her shoulders. Before she even realized she moved, her hands were on his waist and she was rising up on her tiptoes.

 

“It's a good thing we aren't random people then, isn't it,” Felicity told him, her lips brushing against his.

 

“A very good thing,” he agreed before meeting her kiss the rest of the way.  

 

“There's going to be a better article out soon,” Oliver said once they broke apart. He nodded down at her tablet. “Starling City took a one sentence statement and made a story out of it. Thankfully, the Times was willing to wait for me to get my partner before they did an interview.”

 

“Partner,” Felicity said slowly, trying out the word. It fit better than tag along, or adventurer. “As your partner, I think we should discuss just what our plans are for this discovery.”

 

Oliver gave her a devil may care smile. It was a look she had come to both appreciate, and dread. There was never any telling what he was thinking when he looked like that. “Well, I already told the Venezuelan government about it. I was thinking the Smithsonian next, but I'm open to suggestions.”

 

Oliver Queen, sharing their discovery with the world. Felicity couldn't help herself. She reached back up. “Maybe over dinner. Do you like Italian?” she asked right before she kissed him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who cheered me on, believing I could do this when I started it almost two years ago. I can't believe we are at the end, or that I did it. 
> 
> Adiwriting, dettiot, I could not have done this without you ladies. Or if I did, it would not be nearly as good.
> 
> I had the best cheerleaders I could ever ask for in ohemgeeitscoley, nightkeepyr, lynslogic, andcreation, and all of you who commented and read. 
> 
> Thank you.


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